tBRUNETlERES  ESSAYb 

in  French  Literature 
a  selection 

Translated   by 

D.Nichol  Smith. 


r 


k. 


A 


Brunetiere's  Essays  in  French  Literature 


BRUNETIERE'S    ESSAYS 


IN 


FRENCH    LITERATURE 


A  SELECTION 
TRANSLATED  BY  D.  NICHOL  SMITH 


WITH  A  PREFACE  BY  rHE  AUTHOR 

Specially  fVritten  for  this,  the  Authorised  English  Translation 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

153-157  FIFTH  AVENUE 

MDCCCXCVIII 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/brunetieresessaOObruniala 


PREFACE 

The  few  essays,  selected  from  many  others  to 
form  the  present  volume,  have  this  in  common, 
that  all  aim  more  or  less  at  the  determina- 
tion of  the  'essential  character'  of  French 
literature.  I  use  this  word  in  the  sense  it 
bears  in  natural  history,  and  the  '  essential 
character '  of  a  literature  is  that  which 
separates  it  or  distinguishes  it  from  all 
other   literatures. 

In  truth,  a  great  literature,  such  as  the 
French  or  the  English,  so  old,  so  rich,  so 
diverse,  and  with  each  successive  epoch  show- 
ing such  differences,  cannot  well  accept  a  single 
formula  and  allow  itself  to  be  imprisoned,  as 
it  were,  within  its  narrow  bounds.     We  must 

always  beware  of  formulae,  and  perhaps  nowhere 
vii 


PREFACE 

more  so  than  in  history  or  in  literature,  in 
which  we  usually  preserve  the  recollection  only 
of  what  is  the  exception.  The  world  knows 
only  one  Dante  and  one  Shakespeare,  and  this  is 
the  very  reason  why  they  are  Shakespeare  and 
Dante.  In  the  same  way  if  certain  traits 
suggest  a  definition  of  the  genius  of  Bossuet, 
for  example,  this  is  the  reason  why  they  cannot 
express  the  genius  of  Moliere.  And  so  at  first 
sight  nothing  seems  more  futile  than  to  try  to 
include  Moliere  and  Bossuet  in  a  common 
definition. 

But  when,  instead  of  comparing  them  only 
among  themselves,  we  compare  them  with 
others,  and  especially  with  foreigners, — the 
author  of  the  Ecole  des  Femmes  with  that  of 
the  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor^  and  Bossuet 
with  the  learned  Tillotson, — the  family  like- 
ness which  had  escaped  us  becomes  evident. 

Facies  non  omnibus  una 
Nee  diversa  tamen. 

viii 


PREFACE 

It  is  therefore  in  no  wise  futile  to  aim  at 
detecting,  at  grasping,  at  fixing  this  family 
likeness.  It  becomes  more  definite,  when, 
not  content  with  having  fixed  it,  we  analyse 
it.  And  it  is  at  last  determined  if  we  widen 
the  field  of  comparison,  and,  instead  of  con- 
fining ourselves  to  the  work  of  a  few  writers, 
apply  ourselves  to  a  whole  epoch,  a  whole 
century,  or  the  entire  history  of  a  whole 
literature.  However  much  they  differ,  French 
writers  resemble  each  other  much  more  than 
they  resemble  English  writers. 

This  is  what  I  have  endeavoured  to  show 
in  the  following  Essays. 

My  object  has  been  to  point  out  that,  of 
all  the  great  modern  literatures,  French  litera- 
ture, which  is  much  nearer  the  Latin  than 
the  Greek,  has  had  as  its  '  essential  character  * 
a  constant  tendency,  an  original  aptitude,  for 
sociability.  Few  Frenchmen  have  written  for 
themselves,    for    themselves    alone,    to    assume 


IX 


PREFACE 

the  position  of  opposition,  as  the  philosophers 
say ;  but  their  ambition  has  been  to  please, 
in  the  noblest  sense  of  the  word,  to  contribute 
by  their  writing  to  the  improvement  or  to  the 
comfort  of  civil  life,  or  to  displease,  when 
they  have  dared  to  do  so,  in  a  manner  yet 
pleasant.  Or,  in  other  words,  if  literature 
has  anywhere  been  the  expression  of  society, 
it  is  in  France  ;  and  this  is  the  reason  of  the 
fecundity,  renewed  from  age  to  age  by  the 
very  changes  of  society  ;  of  the  universality, 
the  acknowledged  clearness,  since  authors  have 
endeavoured  to  make  themselves  accessible  to 
everybody ;  of  some  of  the  weaknesses  too, 
on  which  in  this  Preface  I  may  be  allowed 
not  to  insist. 

No  more  need  I  insist  on  the  interest  of  this 
investigation.  Criticism  and  literary  history 
are  not  sciences,  nor  even  '  scientific,'  but  they 
may  yet  avail  themselves  of  scientific  methods, 
and  in  a  certain  measure  they  can,  like  science. 


PREFACE 

aim  at  discovering  or  formulating  laws.  If  it 
is  quite  clear  that  they  can  succeed  in  this  only 
by  disengaging  from  the  profound  study  of 
works  the  common  elements  which  are  always 
found  in  those  of  the  most  particular  or  indi- 
vidual nature,  the  determination  of  the  *  essen- 
tial character  *  of  schools,  of  epochs,  of  a  whole 
literature,  is  one  of  the  methods  which  are 
naturally  suggested.  This  I  hope  will  appear 
sufficiently  clear  in  these  Essays.  And  if,  in 
addition,  by  reason  of  this  sociability  which 
seems  to  me  to  be  the  characteristic  of  French 
literature,  I  have  provided  English  readers  with 
new  themes  of  interest,  I  hope  they  will  not 
be    disappointed,   and    I    shall   be   exceedingly 

pleased. 

F.  B. 


XI 


NOTE  BY  THE  TRANSLATOR 

The  following  essays  are  selected  from  three 
of  the  series  of  M.  Bruneti^re*s  collected  works 
— Etudes  critiques  sur  rhistoire  de  la  litthature 
fran^aise  (Volumes  III.,  IV.,  and  V.),  (Questions 
de  critique,  and  Essais  sur  la  litter  at ure  contem- 
-poraine.  As  M.  Brunetiere  has  kindly  given 
his  assistance  in  the  selection  of  them,  the 
volume  may  reasonably  be  considered  the 
author's  epitome  of  a  portion  of  his  best 
work. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  M.  Bruneti^re*s 
work  cannot  be  translated ;  and,  indeed,  it 
is  of  so  individual  a  nature,  and  derives  so 
much  of  its  value  from  its  qualities  of  style, 
that  it  must  lose  considerably  by  being 
rendered     in    another     language.       Rhetorical 


NOTE  BY  THE  TRANSLATOR 

writing,  and  French  rhetoric  in  particular, 
always  runs  the  risk  of  losing  its  personal 
note  in  translation,  and  leaves  the  translator 
in  the  sorry  dilemma  of  re-fashioning  the 
original  past  recognition,  or  of  alienating  those 
readers  who  justly  expect  good  English.  It 
is  the  old  problem  ;  only  in  the  present  case 
it  is  aggravated  by  special  circumstances.  The 
extreme  importance  of  the  Essays,  however,  and 
particularly  their  suggestiveness,  have  prompted 
the  attempt  to  give  them  an  English  dress. 
And,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  M.  Brunetiere*s 
translator  will  always  succeed  best  by  inclining 
to  as  close  a  rendering  as  idiom  will  permit. 

D.  N.  S. 


XIV 


CONTENTS 


The  Essential  Character  of  French  Literature 

The  Influence  of  Women  in  French  Literature 

The  Philosophy  of  Moliere 

Voltaire  and  Jean-Jacques  Rousseau 

The  Classic  and  Romantic 

Impressionist  Criticism 

An  Apology  for  Rhetoric  . 


I 
28 
66 

134 

168 
207 
235 


Brunetiere's  Essays  in  French  Literature 

THE  ESSENTIAL  CHARACTER  OF 
FRENCH  LITERATURE 

b^  I 

One  is  certainly  open  to  the  charge  of  rashness,  if 
not  of  useless  endeavour,  in  proposing  to  describe  or 
sum  up  in  a  word  the  essential  character  of  a  literature 
so  great,  so  rich,  above  all  so  varied,  as  the  French. 
What  connection,  indeed,  can  be  found  between  a 
story  of  the  Round  Table,  as  Le  Chevalier  au  Lion  by 
Crestien  de  Troyes,  for  example,  and  Le  Maitre  de 
Forges^  or  Doit-on  le  dire  F  or  some  other  vaudeville, 
by  Eugene  Labiche  or  by  Edmond  Gondinet  ?  They 
differ  in  every  respect,  even  in  the  language  ;  and 
there  is  a  still  greater  difference  between  the  authors 
themselves,  to  say  nothing  of  the  times  and  places. 
But  if,  on  the  plea  of  defining  the  essential  character  of 
a  literature,  we  began  by  omitting  all  its  eccentricities, 
what  would  be  left  as  the  insignificant  remainder  ? 
What  would  we  have  of  literary  or  even  of  historic 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

value  ?  And  would  we  not,  by  analysis  on  analysis, 
have  but  reduced  the  very  material  of  our  observa- 
tions, till  we  lost  it,  as  it  were,  by  evaporation  ? 

This  objection  can  be  easily  answered.  If  it  is 
not  absolutely  true, — a  constant  and  mathematical 
truth  which  may  be  verified  on  every  occasion, — that 
a  great  literature  is  the  adequate  expression  of  the 
genius  of  a  race,  and  its  history  the  faithful  abridg- 
ment of  that  of  a  whole  civilisation,  the  contrary  is 
undoubtedly  even  less  true  ;  and  though  an  interval 
of  six  or  seven  hundred  years  may  have  made  a 
difference  between  a  trouvere  of  the  twelfth  century 
and  a  vaudevillist  of  the  Third  Republic  of  our  days, 
there  is  bound  to  be,  all  the  same,  some  connection 
between  them.  May  we  not  add  that  —  in  a 
Europe,  in  which,  during  the  last  thousand  years 
alone,  so  many  races  have  mingled  and  blended,  and 
so  many  treaties  have  been  made  and  unmade — 
it  is  rather  in  their  literatures  than  within  their 
frontiers  that  the  great  nations  of  history  have 
awakened  to  a  sense  of  their  individuality  ?  There 
would  be  no  Italy  were  there  not  something  com- 
mon to  Dante  and  Alfieri,  no  more  than  there  would 
be  a  Germany,  were  there  not  innate  in  every  Ger- 
man something,  even  at  this  day,  of  Luther.  But 
what  decides  the  question  and  justifies  the  search 
after  the  essential  character  of  a  literature,  is  the 
consequences  which  seem  to  result  from  it, — the  light 
which  this  character,  once  it  is  defined,  throws  in 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

some  way  or  other  on  the  inmost  history  of  a  litera- 
ture, and  the  knowledge  which  it  gives  of  the  gradual 
development  of  the  national  spirit. 

Let  us  suppose,  by  way  of  example,  that  the  es- 
sential character  of  Italian  literature  is  that  of  being 
what  may  be  called  an  artistic  literature.  This 
characteristic  alone  distinguishes  it  and  separates  it  at 
once  from  all  the  great  modern  literatures,  from  the 
French  as  well  as  the  German,  from  the  English  as 
well  as  the  Spanish.  Works  of  art  are  certainly  in 
abundance  in  these  literatures,  but  there  are  few 
which  are  artistic  in  motive  and  by  design,  i&vr  in 
which  their  author,  like  Ariosto  or  Tasso,  aimed 
only  at  following  poetic  caprice  or  realising  a  dream 
of  beauty.  In  this  same  characteristic,  too,  are  in- 
cluded the  secret  affinities  which  Italian  literature 
has  always  had,  as  is  well  known,  with  the  other 
arts,  and  notably  with  painting  and  music  :  there 
is  something  of  Orcagna  in  the  poem  of  Dante, 
and  when  we  read  the  ^Jerusalem  or  the  Aminta  do 
we  not  really  feel  that  we  are  present  at  the 
transformation  of  the  epic  into  a  grand  opera  ? 
This  likewise  explains  the  spell  which  •  the  same 
literature  wrought  on  the  imaginations  of  the  time 
of  the  Renaissance.  It  was  from  the  Italians  that 
Frenchmen  living  under  Francis  I  and  Henry  II, 
and  Englishmen  of  the  time  of  Henry  VIII  and 
Elizabeth,  obtained  their  first  feeling  for  art ;  and 
if  the  appreciation  of  the  personal  and  intrinsic  value 

3 


BRUNETIERFS  ESSAYS 

of  form  is  not  the  whole  Renaissance,  is  it  not  at 
least  its  most  important  part  ?  Who  can  fail  to 
see  also  the  bearing  of  this  idea  of  a  purely  artistic 
literature  on  what  the  Italians  once  called  by  the 
name  of  virtu — which  is  not  virtue,  which  may  even 
be  its  opposite,  but  which  in  any  case  is,  as  a  natur- 
alist or  a  logician  would  say,  the  genus  of  which 
virtuosity  is  only  a  particular  species  F  And  who 
consequently  can  fail  to  see  in  what  manner,  and 
how  quickly,  the  definition  of  the  essential  character 
of  the  literature  leads  us  insensibly  to  the  knowledge 
of  the  Italian  character  itself? 

Let  us  take  another  example  and  say  that  the 
essential  character  of  Spanish  literature  is  that  of 
being  a  literature  of  chivalry.  Is  it  not  true  that 
its  whole  history  is  illuminated  by  it  as  by  a  ray  of 
light  ?  The  epic  songs  of  the  Romancero,  stories  of 
adventure  in  the  style  of  the  Amadis  or  of  the  Diana 
of  Montemayor,,  the  dramas  of  Calderon  or  Lope 
de  Vega,  the  Physician  of  His  Honour  or  Mudarra  the 
Bastard,  mystic  treatises  and  picaresque  novels,  the 
Castle  of  the  Soul  or  Lazarillo  de  Tormes, — we  recognise 
the  bond  of  connection  between  all  these  diverse 
works,  their  family  characteristic,  the  hereditary  trait 
which  testifies  their  common  origin,  this  Castilian 
pundonor,  whose  exaggeration,  now  sublime  and  now 
grotesque,  moves  with  almost  pleasing  unconcern,  as 
in  the  story  of  the  Knight  of  the  Sorrowful  Coun- 
tenance, to  the   extremes  of  devotion  and    folly.     If 

4 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

in  our  modern  Europe,  political  and  industrial,  utili- 
tarian and  positivist,  we  have  not  yet  entirely  lost  - 
the  sense  of  chivalry,  we  are  for  this  indebted  to 
Spanish  literature :  and  it  would  not  be  difficult  to 
prove  that  it  is  this  literature  which  has  preserved  for 
us  all  that  deserved  to  survive  of  the  spirit  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  I  cannot  believe  that  this  remark 
would  be  useless  to  a  closer  knowledge  and  fuller 
understanding  of  Spanish  literature,  of  its  historic 
role,  and  of  the  genius  of  Spain  itself. 

The  essential  character  of  French  literature  is 
more  difficult  to  determine.  Not  that  in  itself  our 
literature  is  more  original  than  any  other,  nor  richer 
in  great  works  or  in  great  men.  Nothing  more  im- 
pertinent could  be  asserted  ;  and  if  the  Spaniards  have 
no  Moliere  and  the  English  no  Voltaire,  we,  in  our 
turn,  have  no  Cervantes  and  no  Shakespeare.  But 
French  literature  is  undoubtedly  the  most  abundant 
and  the  most  voluminous,  not  to  say  the  most  fertile, 
of  all  modern  literatures.  It  is  the  oldest  of  them, 
and  we  can  recall,  without  vanity,  that  neither  Dante 
in  Italy  nor  Chaucer  in  England  concealed  what  they 
owed,  the  one  to  our  troubadours  and  the  other  to  the 
anonymous  authors  of  our  old  fabliaux.  Is  it  not  also 
the  most  industrious,  the  most  receptive,  one  might 
say — the  literature  which  has  always  been,  no  matter 
what  may  be  said,  the  most  inquisitive  about  foreign 
literatures,  the  most  largely  inspired  by  them,  the  least 
scrupulous  in  "  turning  them  into  blood  and  nourish- 

5 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

ment "  ?  Ronsard  is  almost  an  Italian  poet ;  and 
Corneille,  with  the  nature  of  a  Norman,  is  almost 
a  Spanish  tragedian,  for  when  it  is  neither  Calderon 
nor  Lope  de  Vega  that  he  follows,  it  is  Seneca  or 
Lucan,  and  both  of  these  were  from  Cordova.  We 
have  also  prose  writers,  such  as  Diderot,  who  have 
been  discussed  for  the  last  hundred  years  and  more, 
as  "  the  most  German  "  or  "  the  most  English  "  of  our 
countrymen.  And  in  a  short  time,  if  we  are  not 
careful,  we,  in  Paris,  will  be  reading  only  Russian 
novelists,  like  GoncharofF  or  Chedrine,  as  we  shall 
be  going  to  see  only  absurdly  Scandinavian  melo- 
dramas, like  The  Wild  Duck  or  The  Lady  from  the  Sea. 
Let  us  add  that  whether  international  or  cosmopolitan 
in  such  a  sense,  French  literature  is  also  so  in  this, 
that  no  other  has  had  the  honour  of  attracting  more 
strangers  :  Italians,  from  Brunetto  Latini,  the  master 
of  Dante,  to  Galiani,  the  friend  of  our  encyclo- 
paedists ;  Englishmen,  such  as  Hamilton  and  Chester- 
field; Germans  above  all,  such  as  Leibnitz  and  the 
great  Frederick.  It  is  all  this  that  makes  French 
literature  so  diverse ;  but  it  is  all  this  too  that 
makes  it  so  difficult  to  characterise  in  a  single  word. 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

II 

If,  however,  rather  than  defining  our  literature  by  its 
qualities  of  order  and  clearness,  of  logic  and  precision, 
of  elegance  and  good  breeding,  the  enumeration  of 
which  is  now  almost  a  commonplace,  we  were  to  say 
that  it  is  essentially  sociable  or  social^  we  would  not 
perhaps  express  the  whole  truth,  but,  if  I  am  not 
mistaken,  we  would  not  be  far  from  it.  Prose  writers, 
and  even  poets,  from  Crestien  de  Troyes,  whom  we 
have  just  mentioned,  to  the  author  of  Les  Humbles 
and  Les  Intimites^  M.  Francois  Coppee ;  from 
Froissart  or  Commynes  to  the  author  of  the  Esprit 
des  Lois  or  of  the  Essai  sur  les  Mceurs^ — scarcely 
one  in  France  has  written  but  under  the  eye  of 
society,  and  without  distinguishing  the  expression 
of  his  thought  from  a  consideration  of  the  public 
to  whom  he  appeals,  and,  consequently,  the  art  of 
writing  from  that  of  pleasing,  persuading,  and  con- 
vincing. "  Even  the  poets  of  Greece,"  said  Bossuet, 
somewhere,  "who  were  in  the  hands  of  the  whole 
people,  instructed  rather  than  diverted.  The  most 
renowned  of  heroes  looked  on  Homer  as  a  master 
who  taught  him  how  to  reign  well.  This  great 
poet  taught  no  less  how  to  obey  well  and  to  be  a  good 
citizen.  He  and  so  many  other  poets,  whose  works 
are  no  less  grave  than  pleasing,  celebrated  only  the  arts 
that  are  useful  to  human  life^  and  proclaimed  only  the 
public    good,   fatherland,    society,    and    that    admirable 

1 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

civility  which  we  have  just  explained^     May  we  not 

think  that  in  so  defining  the  essential  character  of 

Greek    literature — though   he   viewed    it    from   too 

high  a  standpoint,  and  without   adequate  regard  of 

the  comedies  of  Aristophanes  and  the  epigrams  of  the 

Anthology — Bossuet  unconsciously  defined  at  the  same 

time  his  own  literary  ideal  ?     In  any  case,  what  he 

says  of  iEschylus  and   Sophocles   is  no  less  true  of 

Corneille  and  Voltaire — Voltaire,  who  may  be  justly 

said  to  have  spoiled  the  drama  by  this  very  desire  to 

"  celebrate  the  arts  that  are  useful  to  human  life " ; 

and  if  I  had  any  doubts  that  this  desire  was  the  soul 

of  our  literature,  the  number  and  diversity  of  the  facts 

explained  thereby  would  suffice  to  convince  me. 

In  this  way,  then,  the  qualities  above  mentioned — 

order  and  clearness,  logic  and   precision,  severity  in 

composition    and    good-breeding    in    style  —  are    all 

connected  with  it,  or  rather  depend  on  it,  as  so  many 

effects  of  one  and  the  same  cause.     If  what  is  not 

clear  is  not  French,  the  reason  for  it  is  not  to  be 

sought  in  the  native  character  of  the  language  or  in 

any  other  secret  virtue.     Our  vocabulary  and  syntax, 

reduced  to  their  essential  elements  and  considered  in 

themselves,  do  not  difl'er  so  much  from  the  syntax  and 

vocabulary    of  Spanish  and   Italian.     They  have  the 

same    origin,   and,    in    more    than    one    respect,    the 

same    evolution.      But    while    in    Spain    and    Italy, 

writers,  and  poets  above  all,  have  endeavoured  to  make 

their  language  more  voluptuous  and  tender,  or  more 

8 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

sounding  and  beautiful,  not  even  shrinking  from  the 
extremes  of  Gongorism  or  Marinism,  but  rather 
throwing  themselves  into  these  vi^ith  all  their  soul,  in 
France,  on  the  other  hand,  our  v/riters  in  general,  and 
our  prose  writers  in  particular,  have  aimed  only  at 
making  themselves  the  more  easily  understood,  and  at 
becoming  accordingly,  with  each  successive  work,  more 
simple,  clear,  and  lucid. 

On  this  point,  Rivarol,  in  his  celebrated  Discours 
sur  funiversalite  de  la  langue  fran^aise  makes  an 
ingenious  and  profound  remark.  "Study  the  trans- 
lation of  the  ancient  authors  into  modern  tongues. 
Thanks  to  the  facility  which  almost  all  the  other 
languages  have  of  modelling  or  moulding  themselves 
on  Latin  or  Greek,  they  give  a  faithful  rendering, 
even  of  the  obscurities  of  their  original,  and  the 
meaning  is  at  last  fully  recovered,  but  at  the  outset 
it  was  lost  with  the  original.  On  the  contrary,  a 
French  translation  is  always  an  explanation^^  This 
could  not  be  better  said,  and  the  only  criticism  that 
I  here  pass  on  Rivarol  is  that  he  tries  to  find  in  the 
character  of  our  language  a  reason  which  seems  to 
me  rather  to  be  implied  in  our  authors'  conception 
of  their  art.  It  is  out  of  regard  to  the  reader,  and,  as 
Bossuet  said,  from  "  civility," — if  it  is  from  a  desire  to 
render  themselves  accessible  to  all,  and  not  merely  to 
compatriots,  but  even  to  foreigners, — that  our  writers 
of  the  seventeenth  century  disencumbered  French 
phraseology  of  the  learned  Greek  and  Latin  mannerisms, 

9 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

by  which  it  was  embarrassed,  burdened,  and  fettered. 
Similarly,  in  the  following  century,  if  the  quicker  and 
smarter  and  simpler  phrase  of  Voltaire  is  generally 
substituted  for  the  fuller  and  richer  and  more  organic 
phrase  of  Pascal  and  Bossuet,  it  is  still  by  way  of 
"  civility,"  in  order  to  reach,  as  could  easily  be  shown, 
new  and  less  educated  classes  of  readers  and  to  instruct 
them.  And  similarly  still,  in  our  day,  if  romanticists 
have  vindicated  the  right  of  using,  in  prose  as  in  verse, 
a  vocabulary  less  "noble  "  and  "select,"  and  accordingly 
more  popular,  than  that  of  the  classicists,  where  is  the 
reason  to  be  found  but  in  this  "  civility,"  which  they 
sometimes  seem  to  have  violated  only  to  appeal  in 
their  turn  to  a  public  less  "  select "  and  "  noble,"  and 
consequently  more  numerous,  than  that  of  Voltaire 
and  Pascal. 

The  first  and  principal  object,  then,  of  our  great 
writers,  in  all  times,  has  been  to  make  themselves  be 
read.  It  is  not  the  universality  of  the  French  language 
that  has  brought  about,  or  merely  prepared,  the  uni- 
versality of  the  literature,  but,  on  the  contrary,  it  is 
the  universality  of  the  literature  that  has  caused  the 
universality  of  the  French  language.  Civilised  Europe 
has  not  read  Rabelais  and  Montaigne,  Voltaire  and 
Rousseau  because  they  were  French  ;  it  has  rather 
studied  French  to  be  able  to  read  Montaigne's  Essays 
and  Rousseau's  Contrat  social.  The  consequence  is 
plain   enough.     If  the  French  language  has  become 

clearer  and  more  logical,  preciser  and  more  polished 

10 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

than  any  other,  it  was  not  so  originally,  and  had  no 
innate  reason  for  becoming  so.  All  honour  in  this 
belongs  to  our  great  writers.  It  is  they  who  have 
made  it  such,  and  they  have  done  so  only  to  make  it 
more  fitting  to  the  social  role  or  function  which  they 
have  from  all  time  assigned  to  literature. 

In  this  manner  likewise  is  to  be  explained  the 
superiority  of  our  literature  in  the  forms  which  may 
be  called  common.  I  speak  of  those  which  can  exist 
only  with  the  participation  of  the  public,  and  with  what 
may  be  called  the  favour  of  its  collaboration.  There 
can  be  no  orator  without  an  audience  ;  no  theatre 
without  a  pit ;  two,  at  least,  are  necessary  for  letter- 
writing  ;    and  the  moralist  must  have  his  salon. 

Let  us  consider  in  this  connection  the  eloquence 
of  the  pulpit.  If  there  has  never  been,  in  any  lan- 
guage, a  preacher  more  eloquent  than  Bossuet  or  more 
solid  than  Bourdaloue,  the  reason  of  it  is  that,  inde- 
pendent of  their  personal  qualities,  none  have  better 
understood  or  developed  in  their  sermons  the  political 
and  social  virtue  of  Christianity.  In  quite  another 
department  of  thought,  among  our  dramatic  authors, 
I  can  think  of  only  Racine  and  Regnard  who  did 
not  pique  themselves  on  correcting  or  directing 
manners  ;  but  all  the  rest,  on  the  other  hand,  made 
that  their  whole  aim — Corneille  and  Moliere,  Voltaire 
and  Destouches,  Marivaux  and  Beaumarchais,  Diderot 
and  Mercier,  Dumas  and  Hugo,  the  author  of  the  Lionnes 
pauvres  and  the  author  of  the  Demi-Monde.    Consider, 

II 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

also,  the  masterpieces  of  the  French  novel,  from 
Honore  d'Urfe's  Astree^  to  go  no  further  back,  to 
M.  Zola's  Germinal,  to  descend  no  further.  There 
are  no  analyses  of  states  of  mind,  as  in  the  novels 
of  Richardson  or  George  Eliot.  What  is  depicted 
is  the  manners  of  the  society  of  the  time.  The  good 
French  novels — w^ith  the  exception  of  Adolphe  or  Rene, 
vi^hich  are  not  novels — are  all  social  pictures.  And 
v^rhat  shall  I  say  in  turn  of  our  great  letter-writers, 
Madame  de  Sevigne,  Madame  de  Maintenon,  Madame 
du  Deffand  and  Voltaire  ?  Hov*^  preoccupied  they  are 
w^ith  society  and,  as  a  result,  with  their  neighbours  ! 
How  they  strain  to  amuse,  to  instruct,  and  to  please  ! 
So  far  is  this  carried  that  a  truly  private  correspond- 
ence— like  that  of  Mdlle.  de  Lespinasse,  where  the 
writer  thinks  only  of  the  interests  of  her  own 
enthusiasm — surprises  us  and  jars  in  the  history  of 
our  epistolary  literature.  And  without  their  society, 
without  their  continual  curiosity,  without  the  unmis- 
takeable  pleasure  they  have  always  had  in  noting  the 
smallest  customs,  what  would  our  moralists  be — La 
Rochefoucauld  and  La  Bruyere,  Vauvenargues  and 
Duclos,  Chamfort  and  Rivarol,  Stendhal  and  Joubert  ? 
If  ever  writers  could  say  that  they  only  "  give  back  to 
the  public  what  they  had  borrowed  from  it,"  it  is  they  ; 
and  this,  too,  is  the  reason  of  their  superiority  over  all 
those  who,  in  other  literatures,  have  vainly  endeavoured 
to  compete  with  them.     Take  Addison  or  Shaftesbury 

as  an  illustration. 

12 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

From  this  method  of  understanding  and  treating 
literature,  it  has  also  come  about  that  the  purely 
literary  qualities  have  insensibly  widened,  so  as  to 
include  those  subjects  which  from  their  nature  seem 
the  least  suitable.  From  the  very  fact  that  our  great 
writers  have  never  separated  the  idea  of  their  art  from 
that  of  the  interest,  the  real  profit,  and  the  pleasure  of 
the  reader,  it  has  happened  that  everything  which  may 
amuse  or  instruct  lies  with  us  within  the  domain  of 
literature.  Thus  questions  the  most  abstract,  and,  by 
definition,  the  most  remote  from  common  experience, 
have  become,  in  French,  the  occasion  of  masterpieces 
which  may  be  equalled,  in  their  kind,  to  the  tragedies 
of  Racine  or  the  fables  of  La  Fontaine. 

Need  any  examples  be  given  ?  The  Provinciales 
are  only  a  collection  of  theological  pamphlets.  The 
Histoire  des  Variations  des  Eglises  protestantes  is  only 
controversial;  The  Entretiens  sur  la  Pluralite  des 
Mondes  is  only  a  treatise  on  Cartesian  astronomy. 
The  Esprit  des  Lois  is  only  a  compilation  of  universal 
and  comparative  jurisprudence.  Emile  is  only  a  novel 
on  education.  I  say  nothing  of  the  Histoire  naturelle 
or  the  Contrat  social.  Yet  what  tragedies,  by  Cor- 
neille  even,  or  Hugo,  what  novels,  by  Le  Sage  or 
Prevost,  Gil  Bias  or  Manon  Lescaut,  what  odes  or 
what  elegies  have  done  more,  or  as  much,  for  the 
diffusion  of  French  literature  and  the  glory  of  its 
name  ?  No,  indeed,  BufFon  said  nothing  so  ridicul- 
ous, as  some  would  seem  to  think,  when  he  advised 

13 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

the  writer  to  "  name  things  only  in  the  most  general 
terms";  and  those  who  still  laugh  at  the  precept  and  the 
master  understand  neither.  BufFon  meant  to  say  that 
as  long  as  geometricians  and  physicians,  theologians 
and  lawyers,  scholars  and  philologers,  in  one  word,  all 
the  specialists,  employed  only  the  technical  language 
of  their  science  or  their  art,  so  long  would  they  lack 
that  intelligent  curiosity,  that  interest,  and  that  general 
sympathy  which  to  them  are  none  the  less  necessary. 
In  other  words,  he  advised  them  to  be  men  rather 
than  embryologists  or  Hebraists,  and  though  the 
advice  may  cause  some  inconvenience,  who  can 
deny  that  it  is  good  ? 

Let  us  here  also  touch  on  the  great  reasons  of  the 
universality  of  the  French  language  and  literature. 
Twice,  at  least,  in  their  long  history  French  litera- 
ture and  language  have  exercised  on  the  whole  of 
Europe  a  universality  of  influence  which  other  lan- 
guages, more  harmonious  perhaps,  like  the  Italian, 
and  other  literatures,  more  original  in  certain  respects, 
like  the  English,  have  all  the  same  never  possessed.  It 
was  under  a  purely  French  form  that  our  Chansons  de 
GestCy  our  Stories  of  the  Round  Table^  our  very  fabliaux — 
whatever  be  their  origin,  German  or  Tuscan,  English 
or  Breton,  Eastern  or  Greek — conquered  and  fas- 
cinated and  charmed,  from  one  end  of  Europe  to  the 
other,  the  imaginations  of  the  Middle  Ages.  The 
amorous  languor  and  subtlety  of  our  love  poetry 
breathe  no  less  in  the  madrigals  of  Shakespeare  him- 

14 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

self  than  in  the  sonnets  of  Petrarch  ;  and  after  the 
lapse  of  so  long  a  time,  we  still  recognise  something 
of  ourselves  even  in  the  Wagnerian  drama,  as  in 
Parsifal  or  Tristan  and  Isolde.  Much  later,  in  an 
entirely  classical  Europe,  from  the  beginning  of  the 
seventeenth  to  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
right  on  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  or  even  more, 
French  literature  held  sovereign  sv^^ay  in  Italy,  Spain, 
England,  and  Germany.  Are  not  Algarotti,  Betti- 
nelli,  Beccaria,  Filangieri  almost  French  names  ? 
What  of  the  famous  Gottsched  ?  If  Lessing  triumphed 
over  Voltaire,  was  it  not  with  the  aid  of  Diderot  ? 
And  can  Rivarol  be  accused  of  national  vanity  in 
writing  his  Discours  sur  runiversalite  de  la  langue 
fran^aise^  considering  that  he  was  half  Italian,  and  that 
the  subject  was  proposed  by  the  Academy  of  Berlin  ? 

All  sorts  of  reasons  have  been  urged  for  this  uni- 
versality of  P'rench  literature  :  we  have  had  statistics, 
if  I  may  say  so,  geographical,  political,  and  linguistic. 
But  the  true  and  real  reason  lies  elsewhere : 
and  it  is  to  be  found  in  the  eminently  social 
character  of  the  literature.  If  our  great  writers  are 
understood  and  admired  by  everybody,  it  is  because 
they  address  themselves  to  everybody,  or  rather 
because  they  speak  to  everybody  about  everybody's 
interests.  They  pay  no  attention  to  exceptions  or 
particularities  :  they  wish  to  treat  only  of  man  in 
general,  or,  as  is  still  said,  of  the  universal  man,  held 
in  the  bonds  of  the  society  of  the  human  being  :  and 

15 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

their  very  success  is  a  proof  that  beneath  all  that  dis- 
tinguishes an  Italian  from  a  German,  this  universal 
man,  whose  reality  has  been  so  often  doubted,  con- 
tinues to  be  and  to  live,  and,  despite  modifications, 
to  remain  the  same. 

Need  any  proofe  be  given  ?  How  is  it  that  the 
Cid  of  Guillen  de  Castro,  although  it  is  a  fine  drama, 
and  it  would  not  be  a  difficult  matter  to  praise  it  for 
certain  qualities  which  are  not  to  be  found  in  the  drama 
of  Corneille,  has  not  met  with  the  same  European 
success.  The  reason  is  that  Guillen  de  Castro,  like 
a  true  Spaniard,  saw  in  his  subject  only  its  purely 
heroic  side.  He  did  not  see  what  Corneille,  on  the 
contrary,  brought  into  such  fine  prominence — the 
struggle  of  Rodrigue's  passion  with  the  social  law  ; 
he  exhausted  its  picturesque  interest,  but  its  purely 
human  interest  escaped  him.  How  again,  in  his 
Phedrey  did  Racine  change  the  material  of  the  Greek 
HippolytusP  And  what  is  it  that  Voltaire  endea- 
voured to  add  in  his  Zaire  by  his  ill-advised  treat- 
ment of  Shakespeare's  Othello  ?  As  with  Corneille,  it 
is  a  social  conflict — the  conflict  of  love  and  religion, 
the  eminently  human  drama  of  Zaire's  hesitations, 
perplexities,  and  tortures  between  what  on  the  one 
hand  she  owes  to  her  birth,  and  what  on  the  other 
she  cannot  refrain  from  giving  to  her  passion. 

Therein  lies  the  reason  of  their  world-wide  wel- 
come. In  the  questions  they  discuss,  it  is  the  essential 
interests  of  *'  civility  "  or  of  humanity  itself  which  are 

i6 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

at  stake.  As  they  consider  the  social  institution 
perhaps  the  most  admirable  thing  in  the  world,  all 
their  thoughts  bear  on  it,  and  thus  their  expression 
of  these  thoughts  cannot  be  a  matter  of  indifference 
to  anybody.  Who  would  not  be  curious  to  know  the 
extent  of  a  country's  duty  to  its  citizens,  or  a  father's 
to  his  children,  or  a  husband's  to  his  wife ;  how  the 
many  conflicts  that  arise  every  day  between  our 
different  duties  are  decided  ;  what  bias  reconciles,  or 
what  superior  principle  unites  and  blends,  instead  of 
opposing  or  contradicting,  the  needs  of  the  individual 
and  the  rights  of  society  ?  It  is  from  being  not  forced, 
but  consecrated  in  its  entirety,  to  the  examination  of 
these  questions  that  French  literature  has  won  univers- 
ality. It  is  well  to  recall  this  fact  to  certain  Frenchmen 
who  forget  it,  and  to  remind  them  that  while  there  may 
even  be  other  reasons,  this  remains  the  chief. 

For  I  do  not  deny,  let  it  be  understood,  that  the 
character  of  the  language  may  also  partly  conduce  to  it, 
and  I  have  already  said  so  in  definite  terms.  It  may 
reasonably  be  held  that  neither  the  number  of  a  popula- 
tion, which  in  the  seventeenth  century  was  a  fifth 
of  the  total  population  of  civilised  Europe  ;  nor  the 
privileged  situation  of  France  in  the  centre  of  the 
Europe  of  that  time  and  at  the  confluence,  as  it  were, 
of  the  literatures  of  the  North  and  South  ;  nor,  in 
short,  its  good  luck  under  Louis  XIV,  and  even  under 
Louis  XV,  to  be  the  model  in  everything  to  the  court 
of  Charles  II  of  England  and  to  that  of  Catherine  of 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

Russia,  failed  to  favour  the  diffusion  of  French  ideas 
and  French  literature.  But  these  are  secondary  or 
rather  derived  reasons,  vv^hich  would  not  have  acted 
of  themselves,  and  none  of  vi^hich  would  have  assured 
the  universality  of  French  literature,  since  none  of 
them  at  other  times  assured  the  universality  of  Spanish 
or  German  literature.  Though  the  Germans  now 
number  almost  fifty  millions,  is  their  literature  thereby 
more  widely  diffused  ?  Are  German  novels  more 
read  ?  Are  German  dramas  more  acted  ?  Is  it  not 
always  French  novels  that  are  shown  in  the  book- 
sellers' windows  of  Vienna  and  Berlin,  of  Rome  and 
Naples  ?  One  might  as  well  seek  the  reasons  of  the 
universality  of  French  literature  in  the  political  action 
of  France,  as  the  reasons  of  Voltaire's  popularity  in 
his  incredulity,  or  of  Hugo's  glory  in  his  political 
opinions.  And  again,  even  this  would  still  lead  us 
back  to  the  same  conclusion,  for  it  would  still  lead  us 
back  to  the  eminently  practical  or  pragmatical^  and 
consequently  social  character  of  their  prose  and  verse. 
And  may  not  that  very  character,  which  explains 
the  rarest  qualities  of  French  literature,  be  held  like- 
wise to  account  for  its  faults  or  its  defects  ?  The 
long  inferiority  of  our  lyric  poetry  is  undoubtedly 
an  eloquent  example.  If  the  Pleiade  failed  in  its 
generous  enterprise ;  if  Ronsard  and  his  friends  left 
behind  them  only  a  reputation  which,  from  a  literary 
point  of  view,  is  dubious  and  always  contested  ;  if  for 
two  hundred  and  fifty  or  three  hundred  vears  there 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

was  nothing  more  inane  than  a  French  ode  or  elegy, — 
nothing  more  meagre  under  the  false  brilliance  of  its 
mythological  adornment,  and  nothing  more  cold, — it 
is  not  Boileau  or  Malherbe  who  is  to  be  blamed  for 
it,  but  only  the  force  of  events  :  and  the  truth  is  that 
in  obliging  literature   to  fulfil,  so  to  speak,  a  social 
function,  in  requiring  the  poet  to  conform  his  manner 
of  thinking  and  feeling   to  the  ordinary  manner,  in 
refusing  him  the  right  to  put  himself  into  his  work, 
or  merely  to  let  himself  appear  in  it,  the  living  springs 
of  lyricism  had   been  dried  up  or  shut  off.     French 
literature  has  thus  paid  by  its  too  manifest  inferiority 
in  the  forms  which  may  be  called  "  personal "  for  its 
superiority  in  the  forms  which  are  "common."     To 
make  itself  accessible  to  everybody,  it  had  to  submit 
to  the  principle  of  depriving  itself  of  the  expression  of 
sentiments,  not  merely  too  rare,  but  only  too  particular. 
It  likewise  denied  itself  all  that  local  detail  or  special 
accent  could  give  to  the  expression  of  the  general 
sentiments  of  the  most  private  and  individual  being, 
for  fear   of  including  in  its  descriptions  or  analyses 
some  elements  which  were  not  the  same  in  all  time 
and  in  every  place.     The  predominance  of  the  social 
character,  and  the  subordination  to  it  of  all  the  others, 
reduced  the  personal  manifestation  to  what  could  be 
contained  in  the  proprie  comynun'ia  dicere  of  the  Latin 
poet :  and  we  have  had  our  iEschylus  and  Sophocles, 
our  Demosthenes   and    Cicero,   but   no    Pindar,    nor 
even  a  Petrarch  or  a  Tasso.     It  would  be  more  diffi- 

19 


BRUNETliRE'S  ESSAYS 

cult  to  say  why,  too,  we  have  not  had  a  Homer  or 
a  Dante,  an  Ariosto,  or  a  Milton. 

Is  it  for  this  that  French  literature  has  sometimes 
been  accused  of  lacking  depth  and  originality  ?  I 
do  not  intend  to  examine  if,  in  this  accusation, 
depth  is  confounded  with  obscurity.  I  only  believe 
that  our  great  writers  affect  somewhat  the  men  of 
the  world,  or  of  the  court,  to  cloak,  or  rather  to 
disguise  this  depth,  while  certain  Germans,  on 
the  other  hand — of  the  school  of  Hegel  or  of  the 
famous  Jean-Paul — readily  inform  us  what  they  have 
endeavoured  to  put  into  their  works.  The  French- 
man piques  himself  on  speaking  clearly  about  matters 
which  are  sometimes  profound,  but  the  German  seems 
to  glorify  himself  too  often  on  stating  obscurely 
matters  which  are  clear.  Is  Kant  really  more  profound 
than  Pascal,  and  Fichte  than  Rousseau  ?  Fichte  and 
Kant,  absorbed  as  they  are  in  slow  elaboration,  in  the 
consideration  and,  if  I  may  say  so,  the  proud  satis- 
faction of  their  own  thought,  leave  their  readers  the 
trouble  of  finding  it  out,  while  Pascal  and  Rousseau 
spare  them  such  trouble.  This  is  still,  evidently, 
the  effect  of  the  same  cause.  The  German  is  satis- 
fied if  he  understands  himself,  and  in  proportion  to 
the  difficulty  which  others  have  in  understanding  him, 
does  he  find  proof  of  the  depth  of  his  thought.  The 
Frenchman  would  think  that  he  had  failed  in  his  aim 
if  the  reader  could  understand  him  only  with  effort,  and 
he  prefers  to  pass  for  superficial  rather  than  for  obscure. 

20 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

Should  it  not  be  added  that,  in  a  literature 
eminently  social  like  the  French,  where  the  interests 
which  are  discussed  are  by  definition  the  interests 
of  humanity  itself,  the  opportunities  of  being  pro- 
found, in  the  philosophic  sense  of  the  word,  are 
naturally  less  frequent  than  in  a  literature  like  the 
German,  where  the  great  pretension  of  the  writer 
is  to  attain  to  the  noumena  of  everything.  For 
a  useful  discussion  of  the  question  of  toleration,  or 
that  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  people,  there  is  need 
of  less  equipment — if,  for  that  matter,  there  is  need 
of  as  much  penetration — and  consequently  there  are 
fewer  chances  of  astonishing  and  surprising  than  in 
the  treatment  of  the  question  "  how  the  Ego  and  the 
Non-ego,  placed  in  the  Ego  by  the  Ego,  are  limited 
reciprocally."  A  Frenchman  would  have  put  it  in 
a  simpler  manner,  but,  as  is  evident,  he  would  have 
appeared  less  profound.  Would  he  have  merely  put 
the  question  ?  And  since  we  can  very  well  separate 
ourselves  from  our  environment,  would  he  not  rather 
have  left  the  problem  to  the  universities  as  one  of 
no  practical  utility  ?  What  more  is  to  be  said 
but  that,  according  as  French  literature  merits  the 
reproach  of  lacking  depth,  it  is  reproached,  as  it  were, 
for  not  being  German  literature  ?  A  very  German 
reproach  this  1 

I  should  have  to  say  almost  the  same  of  its  so-called 
want  of  originality,  which  I  do  not  combat  either, 
but  explain   by  further    reference   to  this  same  social 

21 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

character.  A  man  may  well  live,  if  he  wishes, 
outside  of  and  on  the  margin,  as  it  were,  of  the 
society  of  other  men,  although  for  that  matter  it  may 
be  rather  difficult.  He  may  withdraw,  in  some  way 
or  other,  from  the  circle  of  his  fellow  creatures,  like 
Byron  or  Shelley.  And  he  may,  if  he  wishes,  act  in 
bold  opposition  to  customs  and  received  opinions.  But 
if,  on  the  other  hand,  he  wishes  to  live  in  society,  and 
for  society — which  is  undoubtedly  permitted  and  really 
even  ordered — he  must  begin  by  submitting  himself 
to  its  customs  and  opinions,  since  this  is  really  the 
only  way  to  modify  them.  Men  are  not  to  be 
persuaded  against  their  prejudices.  And  just  as  we 
begin,  so  as  to  make  ourselves  masters  of  nature,  by 
obeying  its  laws,  the  knowledge  of  which  gives  us  the 
means  of  escaping  from  them,  so,  and  with  stronger 
reason,  we  can  triumph  over  prejudices  only  as  we 
begin  by  sharing  them.  In  this  way  an  eminently 
social  literature  would  be  always  less  original  than 
a  literature  whose  ideal  would  tend,  like  Italian 
literature  of  old,  only  to  the  realisation  of  pure  beauty, 
or,  like  English  literature  still  to  this  day,  to  the  free 
manifestation  of  individual  energy.  This,  if  you  will, 
is  the  weakness  or  the  want  of  classical  French  liter- 
ature. It  would  be  so  certainly,  if  this  weakness  was 
not,  on  the  other  hand,  as  I  have  endeavoured  to 
show,  one  of  the  conditions  of  its  strength.  We 
cannot  have    everything ;    human  affairs   are    always 

mixed  ;    and  as  for  deciding,  if,  among  so  many  con- 

22 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

ceptions  of  literature,  there  is  one  which  should  be 
absolutely  preferred  to  others,  or  to  all  the  others — 
this  would  be  a  very  interesting  problem,  but  it  does 
not  concern  us  at  present. 


Ill 


Shall  I  now  show  the  strong  light  which  is  thrown 
by  this  definition  of  the  essential  character  of  French 
literature  on  the  obscure  parts  of  its  history  ?  The 
discredit  and  final  neglect  into  which  the  "  victims  of 
Boileau,"  for  example,  have  fallen,  to  whom  may  be 
joined  the  majority  of  those  of  Voltaire  :  the  contra- 
dictory judgments  that  have  been  so  often  passed,  and 
are  passed  still,  on  the  "  Societe  precieuse  "  :  the  quarrel 
of  the  ancients  and  moderns,  the  importance  of  which 
has  for  so  long  been  strangely  neglected  :  the  nature 
of  the  revolution  wrought  on  the  literature  of  his  time 
by  the  author  of  the  Nouvelle  Helo'ise  and  the  Confes- 
sions :  the  true  point  of  debate  in  the  first  years  of  this 
century  between  the  classicists  and  romanticists  :  all 
these  become  clearer  and  more  connected,  and  order 
and  adjust  themselves,  when  they  are  referred  to  the 
essential  character  of  French  literature.  If  the  names 
of  the  Theophiles  and  Saint- Amants  are  almost  un- 
known, it  is  because  they  wished  to  indulge  in  "  personal 
literature  "  at  a  time  when  the  tendency  of  writers  was 

23 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

eminently  social^  and  when,  accordingly,  there  was 
not  that  public  opinion,  without  which  nobody  in 
France  has  ever  been  able  to  do  anything.  In  like 
manner  what  the  romanticists  claimed  was  the  right  of 
being  themselves,  of  breaking  away  from  the  restraints 
which  the  recollection  of  masterpieces  of  a  "  purely  im- 
personal literature"  imposed  on  them ;  and,  what  is  very 
curious,  but  very  significant,  they  no  sooner  obtained  this 
right  than  they  renounced  it.  In  like  manner  the  Pro- 
testants, when  they  won  from  Rome  liberty  of  thought 
and  belief,  hastened  to  surrender  it  in  the  making  of 
separate  churches  for  themselves.  But  all  these 
questions  are  only  for  the  literary  historian,  and  this 
is  why  I  prefer,  now  that  I  have  alluded  to  them,  to 
contrast  the  essential  character  of  French  literature 
— so  as  to  succeed  in  making  it  evident  of  itself — 
with  the  essential  characters  of  the  German  and 
English. 

In  comparison  with  French  literature,  defined  and 
characterised  by  its  spirit  of  sociability,  English 
literature  is  an  individualistic  literature.  With  the 
obvious  exception  of  the  generation  of  Congreve  and 
Wycherley,  and  perhaps  also  of  that  of  Pope  and 
Addison,  to  which  it  must  not  be  forgotten  Swift  too 
belonged,  the  English  seem  to  write  only  to  give 
themselves  the  exterior  sensation  of  their  individuality. 
Hence  that  humour^  which  may  be  defined  as  the  expres- 
sion of  the  pleasure  which  they  feel  in  thinking  only 

after  their  own  way.   Hence  the  abundance,  the  richness, 

24 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

the  amplitude  of  the  lyric  vein,  if  individualism  is  pre- 
cisely its  source,  and  if  an  ode  or  an  elegy  is  as  the  in- 
voluntary flow  and  overflow^  of  w^hat  is  most  hidden 
and  secret  and  personal  in  the  soul  of  the  poet. 
Hence  also  the  eccentricity  of  their  great  vi^riters  in 
comparison  with  the  rest  of  the  nation,  as  if  in  truth 
they  recognised  their  own  personality  only  in  opposing 
themselves  to  those  who  seem  most  like  them.  Can 
we  not  name  other  characteristics  of  English  litera- 
ture ?  This  I  shall  not  venture  to  answer  :  all  I  say 
here  is  that  I  do  not  know  how  to  express  better  the 
differences  which  separate  it  from  ours. 

This,  also,  is  all  that  I  intend  to  do  in  saying  that 
the  essential  character  of  German  literature  is  that  of 
being  philosophic.  Their  philosophers  are  poets,  and 
their  poets  philosophers.  Goethe  is  to  be  seen  no 
more,  and  no  less,  in  his  Theory  of  Colours  or  his  Meta- 
morphoses of  Plants  than  in  h.\%  Divan  or  h\s  Faust ;  and 
lyricism,  if  I  may  here  use  this  proverbial  expression, 
"floods  its  banks"  in  the  theology  of  Schleiermacher 
and  the  philosophy  of  Schelling.  Perhaps  this  may  be 
one  at  least  of  the  reasons  of  the  mediocrity  of  the  Ger- 
man drama  ?  It  is  evidently  the  reason  of  the  depth 
and  reach  of  Germanic  poetry.  Even  in  the  master- 
pieces of  German  literature  there  may  be  said  to  be 
something  confused,  or  rather  mysterious,  suggestive 
in  the  highest  degree,  something  which  leads  to  the 
thought  by  the  intermediary  of  the  dream.  Who 
has  not  been   struck,   despite   the  barbarous   termin- 

25 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

ology,  with  the  fascinating  and  eminently  poetical 
qualities,  at  once  realistic  and  ideal,  in  the  great 
systems  of  Kant  and  Fichte,  Hegel  and  Schopen- 
hauer ?  Assuredly  there  is  nothing  more  widely 
separated  from  the  character  of  our  French  literature. 
We  come  to  understand  what  the  Germans  reproach 
us  with,  when  they  reproach  us  with  lacking  depth. 
Let  them  pardon  us  in  our  turn  if  we  do  not  reproach 
their  literature  with  not  being  ours  I 

For  it  is  well  that  it  should  be  so,  and  for  five  or 
six  hundred  years  it  is  this  that  has  brought  about  the 
greatness,  not  merely  of  European  literature,  but  even 
of  western  civilisation  itself.  I  refer  to  what  all  the 
great  peoples,  after  slow  elaboration  in  national  isola- 
tion, have  paid  back  to  the  common  treasury  of  the 
human  mind.  We  owe,  then,  to  this  last  nation  the 
sense  of  the  mysterious,  and,  so  to  speak,  the  revela- 
tion of  the  beauties  of  the  obscure  and  intangible. 
To  another  we  owe  the  sense  of  art,  and  what  may 
be  called  the  knowledge  of  the  power  of  form.  A 
third  has  transmitted  to  us  what  is  most  heroic  in  the 
conception  of  chivalric  honour.  And  to  another, 
lastly,  we  owe  the  knowledge  of  what  is  at  once 
fiercest  and  noblest  in  human  pride,  what  is  most 
salutary  and  dreadful.  But  for  us  Frenchmen,  our 
role  has  been  to  connect,  to  blend,  and  to  unify,  as 
it  were,  under  the  idea  of  the  general  society  of 
the    human   race,  all    these   contradictory   or    hostile 

elements.     All   Europe   has  borrowed  our  inventions 

26 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

and  ideas  to  appropriate  them  to  the  genius  of  its 
different  races,  whether  Latin  or  Romance  in  origin, 
Celtic  or  Gallic,  or  even  Germanic.  In  reborrowing 
them,  in  our  turn,  and  in  adopting  them  when  thus 
transformed,  we  have  asked  only  to  be  able  to  assist 
in  the  progress  of  reason  and  humanity.  We  have 
cleared  up  their  confusion,  we  have  cured  their 
canker,  we  have  generalised  their  particularities,  we 
have  humanised  their  excess.  Have  we  not  also 
sometimes  lessened  the  greatness  or  alloyed  the 
purity  ?  If  Corneille  has  made  the  still  somewhat 
barbarous  heroes  of  Guillen  de  Castro  liker  ourselves, 
has  not  La  Fontaine,  in  imitating  the  author. of  the 
Decameron^  made  him  grosser  than  he  is  in  his  own 
tongue ;  and  if  the  Italians  cannot  accuse  Moliere 
for  what  he  has  borrowed  from  them,  the  English 
have  the  right  to  complain  that  Voltaire  little  under- 
stood Shakespeare.  But  it  is  no  less  true  that — by 
distinguishing  from  the  individual  man  of  the  North 
or  of  the  South  that  idea  of  a  universal  man,  for 
which  we  have  been  so  much  blamed — if  any  modern 
literature  has  uniformly  proclaimed  "  the  public  good 
and  civility,"  it  is  French  literature.  And  this  ideal 
cannot  be  so  futile  as  has  been  too  often  supposed, 
since,  as  I  have  endeavoured  to  show,  from  Lisbon  to 
Stockholm,  from  Archangel  to  Naples,  it  is  this  which 
foreigners  have  been  pleased  to  find  manifest  in  the 
masterpieces,    or    rather    in   the  entire   range   of  the 

history  of  our  literature. 

27 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  WOMEN  IN 
FRENCH  LITERATURE* 

Although  the  books  whose  titles  we  give  below  are 
very  unequal  in  merit,  and  do  not  address  themselves 
to  the  same  public,  they  have,  at  least,  this  point  in 
common,  that  they  deal  with  the  history  of  polite 
society,  and  bring  up  once  again  the  question  of  the 
influence  of  women  in  the  vicissitudes  of  French 
literature.  From  "la  tres  sage  Helois"  and  Marie 
de  France,  who  lived  in  the  thirteenth  century,  to 
Madame  de  Stael  and  George  Sand,  how  many 
women  authors  have  written  without  effect — I  mean 
to  say  without  becoming  models  for  the  women, 
and  even  for  the  men,  who  have  come  after  them, 
and  without,  consequently,  inoculating  the  French 
spirit  with  some  of  the  bad  as  well  as  the  good  qualities 
of  their  sex  ?     Even   those  who  did   not  write,  and 


*  I.  Les  Mceurs  folia  et  la  Litterature  de  cour  sous  Henri  11,  par  M. 
Edouard  Bourciez.  Paris,  1886  ;  Hachette. — II.  Histoire  des  femmes 
ecri-vains  de  la  France,  par  M.  Henri  Carton.  .  Paris,  1886  ;  Dupret. — 
III.  Choix  de  lettres  de  femmes  ceVehres,  depuis  le  xvi"  siecle  jusqu'a  nos 
jours,  par  un  professeur  de  I'Universite.  Paris,  1886  ;  Delalain. — IV. 
Les  femmes  de  France  prosateurs  et  poetes,  morceaux  choisis  par  M.  P. 
Jacquinet,     Paris,  i886  ;  Belin. 

28 


ESSAYS  IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

have  left  only  a  name,  or  at  the  very  most  a  debris 
of  correspondence,  but  who  have  none  the  less  been 
vaunted  for  their  wit  and  grace,  and  whose  power 
was  none  the  less  real,  how  did  they  exercise 
this  power,  and  for  whose  benefit  or  disadvantage  ? 
This  is  what  we  ask  ourselves  on  reading  this  Choix 
de  lettres  de  femmes  ciVebres  and  this  Recueil  de  morceaux 
choisisy  in  which  M.  Jacquinet  and  a  "university  pro- 
fessor," by  a  gallant  innovation,  and  as  happy  as  gallant, 
have  made  only  women  figure.  It  is  this  question 
which  M.  Henri  Carton's  book  on  Les femmes  ecrivains  de 
la  France  should  answer,  and  would  answer,  did  it  not 
absolutely  fail  to  fulfil  the  promise  of  its  title.  It  is  this, 
too,  which  we  in  our  turn  should  now  like  to  examine. 
To  be  treated  with  the  fulness  it  deserves,  this 
subject  would  demand  a  whole  volume,  or  more,  for 
it  is  nothing  less  than  the  history  of  French  literature 
treated  with  a  certain  bias  and  viewed  in  a  certain 
perspective.  Although  we  know  nothing  of  the 
ruelles  and  salons  of  the  time  of  the  Crusades,  and 
though  the  French  court,  for  women  as  for  men,  was, 
till  the  time  of  Louis  XII  and  Francis  I,  just  the 
personal  retinue  of  the  king,  yet  the  Middle  Ages  had 
their  women  historians  and  poets  ;  nor  is  there,  from 
the  first,  any  interruption  in  their  line  of  succession. 
In  proof  of  this,  nothing  would  be  easier  than  to  name 
offhand  twenty,  thirty,  or  even  a  hundred  authoresses, 
whom  M.  Jacquinet,  in  his  Collection^  and  M.  Carton, 
in  his  History^  have  not  even  mentioned.     Such,  for 

29 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

example,  are  Madame  du  Noyer,  Madame  Nouvellon, 
Madame  Patin,  Madame  Pringy,  Madame  de  Louven- 
court,  Madame  Moussart,  Madame  Durand,  Madame 
Vatry,  Madame  de  Gomez,  Mademoiselle  Masquiere, 
Madame  du  Hallay,  Mademoiselle  de  La  Force,  Madame 
de  Murat,  and  Madame  d'Aulnoy,  who  all  lived  from 
1680  to  about  1725,  a  short  but  very  obscure  period  of 
our  literary  history,  and  many  of  whom,  I  am  sure, 
would  not  be  unworthy  of  having  "  Extracts "  made 
from  their  works.  And  as  for  those  who  did  print, 
whether  or  not  we  add  those  who,  without  being  authors, 
aimed  at  protecting  or  influencing  literature,  we  could 
easily  lengthen  the  already  long  list  which  Somaize  has 
given  in  his  Dictionnaire  des  Precieuses  for  a  single  half 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  If  other  literatures  have 
not  wanted  women  authors,  the  succession  has  not 
been  so  regular,  nor  the  tradition  so  constant,  as  with 
us ;  and  a  literary  history  of  the  women  of  France 
would  trace,  almost  year  by  year,  the  very  history  of 
our  national  literature.  Though  we  cannot  here 
make  any  pretence  to  write,  or  even  to  sketch  it,  we 
can  still  try  to  show  how  we  understand  it,  and  to 
indicate  roughly  in  what  way  the  influence  of  women 
has  affected  our  literature. 

We  do  not  need  to  go  further  back  than  the  six- 
teenth century.  We  have  not  a  sufficient  knowledge, 
either  of  the  literature  or  of  the  habits  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  On  the  one  hand  we  can  find  nothing  in  any 
literature  more  gross,  more  brutal,  and  less  refined 

30 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

than  our  old  fabliaux,  while  on  the  other  hand  we 
are  unable  to  explain,  without  the  influence,  the 
example,  and  the  authority  of  women,  the  prodigious 
success  of  the  poetic  and  even  mystic  stories  of  the 
Round  Table  ;  but  what  we  are  unable  to  understand, 
what,  at  least,  I  humbly  admit  I  cannot,  is  the  con- 
nection, or  relation  of  so  much  ribaldry  with  so 
much  delicacy,  of  the  first  part  of  the  Roman  de  la 
Rose  with  the  second.  No  doubt  chronology,  ethno- 
graphy, and  philology  will  explain  it  to  us  some  day  ; 
they  will  distinguish  with  perfect  precision  what  we 
mix  up  and  confuse  :  but,  in  the  meantime,  neither 
can  we  distinguish  it  with  sufficient  certainty,  nor 
can  they  explain  it  with  sufficient  assurance.  Our 
scholars  have  done  much  for  the  literature  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  but  in  the  histories  which  they  have  given 
us  they  have  as  yet  forgotten  to  advance  any  theories, 
and  have  made  catalogues  rather  than  histories.  I 
shall  add,  no  matter  how  little  it  be  their  opinion, 
that  if  they  have  established  anything,  it  is  that  there 
are  two  histories  of  French  literature,  just  as  there  are 
two  French  literatures, — the  one  beginning  with  the 
tenth  century  and  ending  with  the  fourteenth,  and 
the  other  being  reborn^  or  born,  in  the  sixteenth  and 
continuing  to  our  day.  The  first  has  its  own  value, 
and  the  study  of  it  is  interesting,  but  it  is  useless  to  a 
knowledge  of  the  second  ;  the  interval  between  them 
was  too  long,  the  separation  too  profound,  the  very 
revolution  of  the  language  too  complete  and  radical. 

31 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

If  we  are  wrong  in  judging  the  Chansons  de  Geste  and 
the  Fabliaux  with  a  taste  which  has  been  formed  by 
familiarity  with  the  classics  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, we  commit  no  less  an  error,  nor  one  less  danger- 
ous, in  attempting  to  judge  a  tragedy  of  Racine  or  a 
comedy  of  Moliere  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  And  this  is  why,  even  though  we 
regret  it,  we  need  not  go  back  to  the  Middle  Ages 
in  search  of  the  origins  of  the  modern  politeness  of 
manners,  language,  and  style. 

It  would  be  more  useful,  and  even  indispensable — 
so  at  least  it  has  long  been  held — to  go  back  to  the 
sixteenth  century.  This  is  what  M.  Edouard  Bourciez 
has  recently  done  in  a  very  interesting  book  :  Les 
Mceurs  polies  et  la  Litter ature  de  cour  sous  Henri  II.  I 
am  not  going  to  criticise  this  book  here,  and  pro- 
visionally I  shall  adopt  its  conclusions.  Whatever 
the  influence  then  which  women  undoubtedly  had 
at  the  court  of  the  princes  of  the  house  of  Valois — 
and  though  some  of  them,  too,  are  plainly  more 
than  emancipated  from  the  old  servitude  —  still  it 
does  not  appear  that  they  had  the  power  to  direct  the 
current  of  public  opinion  or  even  to  go  against  it  j 
and,  generally,  they  followed  it.  Neither  Rabelais, 
nor  Calvin,  nor  Montaigne,  nor  so  many  others,  and 
these  are  precisely  the  greatest,  seems  to  have  under- 
gone the  influence  of  the  women  of  the  time,  nor  to 
have  revolted  against  it,  which,  of  course,  is  just 
another  way   of  undergoing  it.     Perhaps  they  think 

32 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

with  Erasmus  "  that  woman  is  an  absurd  and  ridiculous 
animal,  though  entertaining  and  pleasant ;  .  .  .  that 
Plato  was  right  in  asking  if  she  should  be  classed 
as  a  reasonable  creature,  or  left  among  the  species 
of  brutes ;  .  .  .  and  that  as  an  ape  is  always  an 
ape,  so  a  woman,  no  matter  what  part  she  plays, 
remains  always  a  woman,  that  is  to  say  silly  and 
foolish."  I  am  quite  willing  to  believe  them  capable 
of  it.  But,  whatever  they  think,  it  never  comes  into 
their  head  that  if  woman  is  a  creature  she  can  have 
a  character,  that  she  can  claim  her  share  in  the  occu- 
pations of  men,  and  much  less,  consequently,  that  she 
can  conceive  the  idea  of  leading,  directing,  or  ruling 
them.  Our  PVench  literature  of  the  sixteenth  century 
is  still  quite  virile,  without  any  alloy  of  feminine 
qualities,  not  only  devoid  of  modesty  and  taste,  but,  it 
must  be  said,  of  shame,  and  as  such  it  is  hardly  French, 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  at  once  truly  Gallic  and  Latin. 
This  fact  may  lead  us  to  ask  the  question  if  the 
troubles  which  filled  the  second  half  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  the  civil  wars  and  the  foreign  wars,  had 
not,  by  imposing  on  the  women  themselves  other 
virtues  than  those  of  their  sex,  stifled,  as  it  were, 
the  awakening  spirit  of  society,  and,  consequently, 
politeness  of  manners  and  elegance  of  speech.  Even 
at  the  court  of  her  brother,  the  first  Margaret,  the 
sister  of  Francis  I,  would  have  liked  (according 
to  the  later  phrase)  to  direct  the  affairs  of  taste. 
So     too    Mary    Stuart,     had    fortune    permitted    it, 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

and  had  she  not  been  forced  too  soon  to  leave  the 
court  of  France  for  her  misty  Scotland.  It  has  been 
truly  said  that  this  dynasty  of  the  house  of  Valois 
"which  the  political  historian  has  the  right  to  reproach 
severely,  created  the  brilliant  side  of  French  civilisa- 
tion, and  pow^erfully  contributed  to  found  our  su- 
premacy in  point  of  elegance  and  taste  "  ;  and  what  is 
true  of  its  first  princes  is  perhaps  still  more  true  of  its 
last.  Francis  I  did  not  usurp  his  title  of  "  Father  of 
Letters "  ;  everybody  knows  Charles  IX's  verses  to 
Ronsard  ;  even  Henry  III  prided  himself  on  being  a 
judge  in  matters  of  art  and  taste.  Yet,  all  the  same, 
neither  kings  nor  queens,  nor  ladies  outside  their  con- 
nection, succeeded  in  the  sixteenth  century  in  fixing 
in  a  truly  stable  if  not  final  form  what  may  be  called 
the  ideal  of  the  French  spirit.  And  whatever  ex- 
planations may  be  given — and  these  are  liberal,  as  they 
always  are,  and  innumerable,  when  the  question  is 
why  something  has  not  come  to  pass — the  fact  is  that 
not  till  the  first  year  of  the  seventeenth  century  do 
we  see  the  rise  of  the  influence  of  women  and  the 
beginning  of  the  history  of  polite  society. 

The  judgments  of  posterity  are  sometimes  odd. 
As  long  as  the  Precieuses  ridicules  shall  be  acted — that 
is  to  say  as  long  as  the  French  language  shall  endure 
— so  long  shall  we  mock  the  Precieuses,  whether 
true  or  false,  ridiculous  or  not,  of  the  Hotel  de  Ram- 
bouillet,  and  the  incomparable  Arthenice  and  Made- 
leine  de   Scudcry.     Yet  it   must  be  recognised   that 

34 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

it  is  to  them  that  the  French  spirit  owes  some 
of  the  best  lessons  which  it  has  ever  received, 
and  our  literature  itself,  by  a  consequence  which  I 
shall  point  out,  an  unmistakeable  part  of  its  glory. 
Moliere  in  mocking  them,  and,  to  mock  them  the 
better,  in  exaggerating  their  absurdities,  was  attend- 
ing to  his  business  of  dramatic  author  ;  but  as  for  us, 
it  is  time  now  to  attend  to  ours,  and  not  accept  a 
satire  as  the  lasting  expression  of  the  judgment  of 
history.  In  reality,  had  the  Precieuses  taught  us  only 
propriety  of  language,  and  not  to  name  on  every  occa- 
sion and  before  everybody  everything  by  its  name, 
that  alone  would  have  been  much  ;  and  Moliere  him- 
self, yes,  Moliere,  without  imperilling  his  glory,  would 
not  have  done  badly,  on  more  than  one  occasion,  to  have 
put  himself  to  their  school.  Art  cannot  and  must  not 
express  what  forms,  no  matter  how,  the  material  of 
everyday  occurrence,  the  vulgar  and  gross  stufF  of  life, 
or  at  least  can  do  so  only  by  transforming  it  ;  and 
this  formula,  which  is  now  that  of  the  conversation  of 
respectable  people,  is  at  the  same  time  the  beginning 
of  the  art  of  writing.  All  that  is  done  cannot  be 
spoken,  all  that  is  spoken  in  the  liberty  of  private  con- 
versation cannot  be  written  ;  we  must  not,  like  BufFon, 
put  on  lace  ruffles  to  appear  before  the  public,  but  no 
more  must  we,  like  Diderot,  choose  just  this  time  to  put 
on  our  dressing  gown,  much  less  to  take  it  off ; — and 
this  is  the  first  lesson  which  the  habitues  of  the  chambre 
bleue  received  of  old  from  the  Marquise  de  Rambouillet. 

35 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

How  far  this  lesson  was  useful  is  known  by  all 
readers,  not  of  Brantome  or  Tallemant  des  Reaux, 
who  are  suspicious  anecdotists,  collectors  of  scandal- 
ous and  often  calumnious  tales,  though  men  of  wit  for 
that  matter,  but  by  readers  of  the  Moyen  de  parvenir^ 
for  example,  or,  at  the  height  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  of  Saint-Amant,  Theophile,  or  Scarron. 
In  Balzac  even  there  are  traits  which  we  would 
not  dare  to  cite.  Ronsard  and  the  Pleiade  had 
endeavoured  to  draw  us  out  of  the  rut,  but  to 
no  purpose  :  the  Gallic  element  returned,  and  still 
kept  on  appearing,  and,  mounting  to  the  surface, 
spread  itself  in  the  fulness  of  its  complacent 
ribaldry.  The  delicate  and  subtle  allegory  of  Astree^ 
too  long,  but  so  charming  in  its  very  roguishness  and 
sentimentality,  was  answered  by  the  Histoire  comique 
de  Francioriy  just  as  at  another  time,  and  in  another 
country.  Fielding  was  to  reply  by  his  Joseph  Andrews 
and  Tom  jfones  to  the  long  novels  of  Richardson. 
Another  was  surprised  that  Madame  de  Rambouillet 
would  not  allow  the  words  of  Rabelais's  vocabulary 
to  be  spoken  in  her  hearing.  "This  is  too  much," 
he  said ;  "  we  have  no  more  liberty."  And  once  again 
we  would  have  obeyed  our  natural  tendencies  had 
the  Precieuses  not  come  to  warn  and  save  us  from 
them.  They  did  not  meet  with  immediate  success  ;  it 
was  not  they  who  could  have  made  French  literature 
break  entirely,  at  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  with  the  Gallic  tradition ;  and,  undoubtedly, 

36 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

this  would  have  been  a  pity  even  had  it  been  possible  : 
but  all  the  same  they  taught  us  to  moderate  the 
flights  of  a  gross  fancy,  and  to  make  everything 
pass,  as  La  Fontaine  said,  with  the  help  of  a  word, 
for  in  France  everything  must  pass.  Even  those 
who  are  Gallic  by  nature  should  be  thankful  to 
them  for  all  the  piquancy  that  is  given  by  a  clever 
and  ingenious  disguise  to  the  ideas  of  certain  things. 
At  the  same  time  that  they  refined  the  old  Gallic 
spirit,  the  Precieuses  were  no  less  averse  to  pedantry 
and  bookishness.  Smitten  with  the  ancients,  intoxi- 
cated with  Greek  and  Latin,  even  our  greatest  writers 
of  the  sixteenth  century  are  pedants,  and  pedants  of 
the  first  degree.  Rabelais  mocks  at  pedants,  and 
we  know  with  what  verve  ;  but  who  will  deny  that 
he  is  one  of  them  himself,  and  that  this  Gargantua  of 
letters,  with  the  continual  display  of  his  encyclopaedic 
knowledge,  is  as  often  unendurable  as  extraordinary  ? 
And  what  of  Ronsard  and  his  disciples,  with  their 
pindaric  odes,  their  learned  allusions,  and  their  myth- 
ology ?  And  what  shall  we  say  of  so  many  others — 
who  sweat  their  classics,  so  to  speak,  through  every 
pore — with  whom,  like  Sorbonne  recluses,  two  verses 
of  Martial  or  an  aphorism  of  Plutarch  take  the  place 
of  arguments  ?  They  are  scholars,  and  they  had  to 
be  followed,  but  they  lack  a  well-bred  bearing  and  the 
art  of  pleasing.  Again  it  is  women  who  will  give  them 
this,  and  it  is  the  Precieuses.  They  will  teach  them 
that    their  learning  which   is  only  erudition    has  no 

37 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

importance  in  itself;  that  the  ancients  were  natural 
people  and  that  the  best  means  of  resembling  them 
is  to  imitate  them  exactly  in  this ;  in  short,  that 
we  must  learn  to  live  and  not  live  to  learn.  It  is 
good  to  know  what  Plato  thought,  but  the  thoughts 
of  Plato  can  no  longer  be  ours  ;  "  the  ancients  are 
the  ancients,  and  we  are  the  people  of  to-day,"  or 
even,  to  put  it  forcibly,  "it  is  in  us  that  is  to  be 
found  that  antiquity  which  we  revere  in  others  "  ;  and 
we  must  endeavour  to  think  in  our  turn  like  them, 
that  is  to  say  freely  and  naturally,  but  not  accord- 
ing to  them.  Let  us  know  Latin  if  we  will,  and 
Greek  if  we  can,  but  let  us  first  be  sensible  men  ;  and 
to  this  end  let  us  bring  learning  out  of  its  cave,  and 
remove  its  sordid,  pedantic,  and  repulsive  appearance, 
and  bring  it  into  the  world  amongst  courtiers  and 
ladies,  and  make  it  intelligible,  accessible,  and  hence 
profitable  to  those  whose  profession  it  neither  is  nor 
ever  will  be.  And,  when  we  write,  let  us  re- 
member that  it  is  not  for  those  few  persons  who 
know  as  well  as  and  sometimes  better  than  we  do 
the  subject  we  are  treating,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
for  those  who  know  it  not  so  well,  who  have  the 
right  to  know  it  not  so  well,  but  who  wish  to 
know  it  all  the  same. 

The  import  of  this  lesson,  which  was  given  with- 
out any  pedantry,  and  urged  and  insinuated  rather 
than  given,  will  be  better  understood  by  consider- 
ing some  of  its  consequences  in   the   history  of  our 

38 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

literature.  By  imposing  on  the  writer  the  qualities  of 
order  and  clearness— qualities  which  they  themselves 
do  not  always  show  in  their  writing,  though  they  have 
a  lively  appreciation  of  their  value — women  assured 
the  perfection  of  French  prose  and  its  universal 
domination.  One  of  the  outstanding  merits  of  the 
Discours  de  la  Methode^  and  that  which  still  gives  it  life, 
is  to  have  brought  philosophy  out  of  the  darkness  of 
the  schools  and  the  closets  of  the  abstractors  of  quint- 
essences, to  make  it  appear,  as  it  were,  in  the  broad 
daylight  of  the  public  thoroughfare,  and  to  introduce 
it  accordingly  into  the  conversation  of  polite  society. 
Pascal  did  the  same  in  writing  his  Lettres  provinciates : 
he  laicised,  if  I  may  say  so,  the  theological  controversy ; 
he  gave  to  the  gentlemen  of  the  court,  and  not  only  to 
the  gentlemen,  but  to  the  ladies  too,  the  means  of  dis- 
puting on  "efficacious  grace"  and  "proximate  power." 
And  Bossuet,  too,  did  the  same,  and  later  on  the  Vol- 
taires,  the  Montesquieus,  the  Rousseaus,  the  Buffons  ; 
the  last  in  making  history  for  the  first  time  readable, 
for  up  to  then  it  had  been  buried  in  the  heavy  folios 
of  a  Dupleix  or  a  Mezeray  ;  the  first  in  translating, 
for  the  use  of  Madame  de  Tencin  or  Madame  du 
DefFand,  the  learned  lucubrations  of  a  Grotius  or  a 
PufFendorff^;  and  all  of  them,  in  fact,  one  after  the 
other,  in  opening  up  new  roads,  by  making  literary 
what  was  not  so  before,  and  what  is  not  so  necessarily 
— a  metaphysical  dissertation,  a  theological  discussion, 
the  history  of  a  great  heresy  or  of  a  diplomatic  negotia- 

39 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

tion,  and  even  a  chapter  of  physical  astronomy  or  com- 
parative physiology.  Of  all  the  services  that  women 
have  been  able  to  render  French  literature,  surely  no 
one  will  think  that  this  is  the  least.  For  it  is 
undoubtedly  they,  by  their  demands  still  more  than 
by  their  example,  though  there  has  been  no  lack  of 
examples,  who  have  given  French  prose  the  qualities 
which  are  the  last  to  be  denied  it — elegance  in  precision, 
perfection  in  measure,  and,  in  the  very  great  writers, 
lucidity  in  depth. 

What  though  women  have  passed  all  measure  in 
their  demands :  they  would  not  be  women  had 
it  been  otherwise.  In  endeavouring  to  purify  a  lan- 
guage, we  always  run  the  risk  of  impoverishing  it, 
and,  in  regulating  its  style,  it  is  no  uncommon  thing 
to  blunt  that  vivacity  of  expression  which  is  its  soul, 
so  to  speak.  In  the  same  way,  if  we  are  willing  to 
admit  that  art  should  not  represent  everything,  nor 
the  writer  speak  of  everything,  it  is  very  difficult,  and 
indeed  very  rash,  to  try  to  mark  exactly  where  the 
privilege  of  both  ends  and  their  freedom  begins.  The 
Precieuses  who  were  in  society,  and  generally  in 
the  best  of  society,  and,  after  the  Precieuses,  the 
women  who  succeeded  them  for  more  than  a  century 
and  a  half  in  the  direction  of  literary  taste,  were 
too  ready  to  believe  that  the  liberty  of  art  and  of  the 
writer  was  bounded  by  their  caprice,  and  that  the 
world  was  neither  wider  nor  more  varied  than  what 

could  be  contained,  in  women  and  men,  in  their  ruelles 

40 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

and  salons.  Hence  followed  several  consequences,  of 
which  they  must  bear  the  blame,  and  which  I  shall 
now  endeavour  to  point  out  cursorily. 

I  cannot  consider  so  very  criminal  their  ways 
of  talking,  which  are  often  odd,  but  sometimes  happy, 
and  always  amusing.  There  has  been  much  stupid 
talk  on  this  matter.  They  perhaps  impoverished 
the  language  of  some  pithy  words  and  simple  turns, 
but,  when  everything  is  taken  into  account,  they 
enriched  it  with  almost  as  many  new  words  or 
expressions.  And  it  is  not  they  who  invented  these 
metaphors  of  which  Moliere  makes  fun  :  "  I  am  going 
to  fish  in  the  lake  of  my  memory  with  the  fish-hook 
of  my  thought "  ;  or  again  :  "  In  the  public  square 
of  your  attention  I  shall  lead  in  dance  the  bear  of 
my  eloquence " ;  these,  in  particular,  belong  to  the 
greater  time  of  the  Italian  Renaissance.  Who  does 
not  know,  too,  that  there  are  at  least  as  many  con- 
ceits in  a  drama  of  Shakespeare  as  antitheses  in  a 
letter  of  our  Balzac  ?  And,  like  the  seicentismo  of  the 
Italians  and  the  euphuism  of  the  English,  did  not 
the  cultism  of  Antonio  Perez  and  Gongora  precede 
in  European  literature  that  of  the  Marquis  de  Mas- 
carille  and  the  Vicomte  de  Jodelet  ?  Euphuism,  or 
cultism,  or  whatever  name  it  is  called,  is  a  malady  of 
language,  which  can  sometimes  extend  to  the  thought, 
but  does  not  always  do  so  j  which,  moreover,  to  be 
well  discussed,  would  perhaps  need  to  be  studied 
more  seriously  than  has  been  done  so  far,  and  more 

41 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

scientifically  too ;  for  its  effects  often  resemble 
closely  enough  those  of  the  natural  expansion  of 
the  creative  power  of  languages.  That  it  is  ridi- 
culous to  ask  me,  to  make  me  sit  down,  "to  satisfy 
the  desire  which  an  arm-chair  has  to  embrace  me,"  I 
shall  certainly  not  deny  ;  but,  since  an  arm-chair  is 
usually  said  to  have  arms,  I  ask,  when  is  the  precise 
moment  in  its  evolution  that  a  metaphor  ceases  to  be 
clever  and  becomes  ridiculous  ?  There  has  not  been 
enough  interest  taken  in  the  solution,  or  even  the 
examination,  of  this  question. 

What  the  Precieuses  must  be  accused  of  is,  of 
having  aggravated,  by  establishing  the  language  of 
good  society,  and  in  order  to  establish  it,  the 
difference  that  everywhere  separates  the  language 
of  literature  from  the  language  of  the  people.  We, 
in  France,  have  no  literature  of  the  people ;  the 
finest  efforts  of  our  eloquence,  the  most  of  our 
finest  verses  somehow  expire  before  they  reach 
the  million  ;  and  every  writer  worthy  of  his 
name  is  really  with  us  an  aristocrat.  How  often 
has  this  been  pointed  out  ?  All  Spain  understands 
Don  ^uixote^  and  in  Italy  they  sing  the  octaves  of 
the  'Jerusalem;  Burns,  to  the  Scots,  is  a  people's 
poet,  and  Dickens,  to  the  English,  is  a  novelist  of  the 
masses  ;  we,  in  France,  have  our  novels  of  Paul  de 
Kock  and  our  songs  of  the  "  cafes-concerts,"  La 
Lait'iere  de  Montferineil  and   the  Bi  du  bout  du  banc. 

The  Precieuses    are    partly   responsible  for  this.       It 

42 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

is  not  that  they  aimed  at  or  wished  this,  it  is  not 
even,  in  a  certain  sense,  that  they  did  anything  for 
it.  But  they  ignored  the  existence  of  too  many 
things  round  about  them  ;  they  had  not  a  sufficient 
knowledge  of  the  world  or  of  life,  but  only  of  the 
salons  and  of  the  court,  and  of  a  few  men  of  letters  ; 
their  experience  was  lacking  in  breadth  and  variety. 
Envious  of  the  suffrage  of  the  salons,  the  men  of 
letters  in  their  turn,  wishing  to  have,  as  is  said, 
the  women  on  their  side,  insensibly  limited  the  field 
of  their  observation,  diminished  their  means  of  expres- 
sion, and  naturally  refined  on  the  small  number  that 
was  left  them.  Thus,  in  no  literature,  perhaps,  is  the 
written  style  more  different  from  the  spoken  style 
than  in  ours ;  in  none  is  it  more  difficult  to  reach 
the  crowd  and  to  satisfy  at  the  same  time  the  select 
few  J  and  in  none,  in  short,  have  the  best  writers 
themselves — I  mean  prose  writers — fewer  appreciative 
readers  at  home,  but,  by  compensation,  more  admirers 
abroad. 

According  as  authors,  under  the  influence  of  the 
salons  and  the  ladies,  thus  gave  up  the  ordinary  use 
of  language  and  the  observation  of  life,  they  gave  up 
also  the  natural  and  the  true.  This  is  a  new  grievance, 
and  perhaps  the  most  grave,  though  luckily  the  native 
independence  of  some  great  men  could  not  fail  to 
considerably  weaken  its  consequences.  Tlie  majority 
of  women  will  always  prefer  an  elegant  falsehood  to 
an   impleasant  or  even  indifferent  truth  ;    and  there 

43 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

would  be  no  salons  if  we  were  all  of  us  quite  natural. 
To  tell  the  truth,  we  disguise  ourselves  to  go  into  the 
world,  and  the  disguise  consists  in  first  throwing  off 
all  the  preoccupations,  the  cares,  and  the  habits  which 
are  in  some  way  or  other  the  substance  of  our  life,  to 
put  on  a  character  whose  first  merit  is  not  to  differ 
perceptibly  from  others.  This  is  well  if  literature  is 
only  an  amusement ;  the  material  is  still  rich  enough 
for  the  observer,  since  it  could  suffice  for  La  Roche- 
foucauld or  Madame  de  Sevigne.  But  it  is  otherwise 
if  the  writer  is  entitled  to  aim  at  something  more, 
as,  for  example,  to  see  the  true  face  under  the  mask, 
and  the  real  man,  living,  acting,  and  feeling  under  the 
correction  and  the  order  of  the  man  of  society  ;  he 
needs  a  liberty  which  the  manners  of  the  court  and 
the  salon  will  never  give  him.  This  is  the  crisis 
through  which  the  literary  influence  of  women  passed 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  and  over  which  it  just 
succeeded  in  triumphing. 

Indeed  all  the  writers  of  the  second  class  yielded  to 
them,  and  even  one  or  two  of  the  first.  If  we  except 
some  of  the  debris  of  the  sixteenth  century,  belated 
into  the  seventeenth,  the  jesters  and  the  writers  of 
grotesque  —  born  enemies  of  salons,  from  many 
motives,  and  especially  because  there  there  is  no 
drinking — all  the  others  are  with  them :  Balzac 
and  Voiture,  Menage  and  Chapelain,  Conrart  and 
Vaugelas,  Benserade  and  Quinault,  Pellisson  and 
Patru,   Mascaron  and    Flechier,    Corneille   even    and 

44 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

La    Fontaine.     The   envious   rail    at    them,   but    the 
women  applaud  themselves,  and  they  are  right,   and 
public  favour  encourages  them.     I  have  endeavoured 
to  point  out  the  motives,  and   I  have  done  justice  to 
the   usefulness  of  their  work.     They  had  spirit  and 
courage,  good  sense  and   taste,  the  taste  of  the  ex- 
quisite and  of  the  grand,  or  rather  the  grandiose,  the 
art  of  understanding  everything  and    speaking  about 
everything, — except  just  what  the   Pascals  and  Bos- 
suets,    the    Molieres   and    Racines,    the  Boileaus  and 
La  Bruyeres  were  to  need  to  speak   to   them  about 
and    to    make    them    understand.      Great    lords   and 
charming  ladies,  salons  of  the   Place  Royale  or  the 
Faubourg  Saint  Germain,  there  was  no  decorum  that 
could    hinder    the   author    of  the    Pensees   or  of  the 
Sermon  sur  la  Mort  from  displaying  before  their  eyes 
the  littleness  and   the   nothingness  of  man,  the  un- 
bounded vanity  of  his  enjoyments,  and  that  inexorable 
weariness  which  is  the  substance  of  human  existence. 
There  was   none   that   could   restrain    the  author  of 
Tartufe  or  of  Phedre  from  piercing  to  the  bottom  of 
worldly  hypocrisy,  or  of  leaving  behind  vain  gallantries 
to  paint  in  all  their  reality  the  passions  of  love.     And 
there    were   no    considerations    that    could    lead    the 
author  of  the  Satires  to  moderate  his  anger  at  the 
verses  of  Chapelain,  or  the  author  of  the  Caracteres 
to  spare  us  the  bitterness  of  his  experience  of  the 
world  and  of  life. 

This  is  why  we   see  them   all,  each  in  his  own 
45 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

way,  without  plot  or  plan,  rising  against  the  domina- 
tion of  the  rhetoricians  and  the  Precieuses.  La 
Bruyere  attacks  them  with  his  biting  and  subtle 
irony,  which  inflicts  but  a  deeper  wound  ;  Boileau 
was  careful  not  to  forget  them  in  his  Satire  sur  les 
Fe?nmes : — 

'Tis  theirs  to  pet  at  whom  the  wits  poke  fun, 
And  grant  an  audience  if  the  world  gives  none. 

Racine    riddles    them    with    his   epigrams ;    Moliere 

writes     the      Precieuses     ridicules     and     the     Femmes 

savantes ;    Bossuet  pitilessly  upbraids  those  worldlings 

who   wish   to  know  how  the   preacher  spoke,  "who 

compare  him  with  himself  and  with  others,  and  the 

first  discourse  with  the  following,  .  .   as  if  the  pulpit 

were  a  place  of  contest  for  the  prize  of  eloquence  "  ; 

and    it  was  on    his   scorn,  in    short,    of   all   rhetoric 

and    all    eloquence    that    Pascal    dared    to    found    his 

own. 

This  is  why  we  will  also  find — if  we  examine  the 

Memoirs    and    the     Correspondence   of    the    time — 

that  not  one  of  them  frequented  the  fashionable  salons. 

And    how  could  they,  if  it   is  there  they  have  their 

adversaries  and  their  enemies,  if  it  is  in  the  salons  that 

Moliere  is  reproached  with  the  crudity  of  his  pictures, 

and  Racine  with  the  truth  of  his  ?     Even  the  worthy 

marquise,    Madame    de    Sevigne    herself,    is   she   not 

suspected    of   preferring    Nicole    to     Pascal  ?       She 

undoubtedly  admires  the    eloquence  of  Bossuet,  but 

46 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

how  much  more  that  of  Mascaron  or  of  Flechier  ! 
And  despite  the  court,  despite  Louis  XIV  and  his 
declared  protection,  the  battle  continues  until,  Pascal 
and  Moliere  being  dead,  Bossuet  having  ceased  to 
preach  and  Racine  to  write,  and  Boileau  having 
retired  into  a  morose  and  sullen  solitude,  the  women 
and  the  salons  regain  their  empire.  It  is  for  them, 
and  thanks  to  them,  that  the  Pradons  and  Boyers  are 
reborn,  the  Perrins  and  the  Corases ;  for  them  that 
the  Pavilions  and  the  Sainte-Aulaires  turn  their 
madrigals,  which  for  that  matter  are  as  lively  as  they 
are  elegant ;  for  them  that  Fontenelle  writes  his  Plur- 
alite  des  Mondes ;  for  them  that  Massillon  preaches. 
The  Marquise  de  Lambert  revives  the  traditions  of 
the  Hotel  de  Rambouillet.  The  Duchesse  du  Maine 
exaggerates  them,  with  her  characteristic  taste  for 
the  excessive  ;  others  follow,  a  new  age  begins,  and 
the  movement,  checked  for  a  short  time,  resumes  its 
course  now  stronger  than  ever. 

For  never  was  the  power  of  women  greater  than  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  and  on  to  the  approach  of 
the  Revolution.  It  is  then  that  they  are  veritable 
queens,  mistresses  and  judges  of  taste  and  opinion. 
Their  courtiers,  or  rather  their  subjects,  are  now 
called  Chaulieu,  Lamotte,  Sacy,  Mairan,  Moncrif, 
Marivaux,  Trublet,  even  Montesquieu  ;  and,  as  at 
the  height  of  the  influence  of  the  Precieuses,  they 
filled  the  French  Academy.  Why  is  it  that  history 
and   criticism   here   change   their   tone  ?     What    has 

47 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

not  been  said  of  the  salons  of  the  eighteenth  century  ! 

In    what    method    have    they    not    been    celebrated  ! 

What  place  have  they  not  been  given  in  the  history 

of  French  literature  ! 

But,  from   one  end   of  the   century  to  the  other, 

has  it  been  noted  what  writers  frequented  the  salons, 

and  how  the  truly  great  men,  or  rather  the  only  great 

men,  were    seldom   there  ?     Voltaire  may  be  said  to 

have  lingered  in  them,  though  for  that  matter  I  have 

never  found  him  at  Madame  de  Lambert's  or  Madame 

de  Tencin's ;  but   after   once   having    breathed   their 

atmosphere  with   delight,  circumstances   turned  him 

from  them,  and  it  is  from  that  time,  and  the  point 

is  well  worth  the  trouble  of  being  noted,  that  dates 

his  true  influence  on  his  contemporaries.    Montesquieu 

also  is  to  be  met  at  Madame  du  DefFand's,  and  caught 

sight  of  at  Madame  Geoffrin's,  but  he  is  only  on  a 

passing  visit,  so  to  speak,  when  he  chances  to  come 

to  Paris,  and  for  eight  or  ten  months  of  the  year  it 

is   at    La   Brede,  while   making    his  wine,    that   he 

thinks  out    his  Esprit    des    Lois.       It    is    the    same, 

too,  with  BufFon  ;  when   he  leaves  Montbard,  if  he 

thinks  of  calling  on  Mademoiselle  de  Lespinasse,  he 

is  said  to  astound  this  eternally  enamoured  creature 

with  the  familiarity  of  his  manners  and  the  vulgarity 

of  his  conversation.     I  say  nothing  of  Rousseau  :  the 

part  he  sets  himself  to  play  is  to  fly  from  salons  and 

society,  where,  moreover,  he  feels  ill  at  ease,  as  if  he 

feared  that  their  flatteries,  bv  softening  the  violence 

48' 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

or  his  hatreds,  would  deprive  his  eloquence  of  the 
food  which  was  its  nourishment. 

And,  in  truth,  not  one  of  them  had  need  of  the 
salons,  nor  the  salons  of  them.  Let  the  salons 
applaud  the  pastorals  of  Fontenelle  and  the  tales  of 
Moncrif  !  The  value  of  the  Esprit  des  Lois  or  of  the 
Discours  sur  V Inegalite  does  not  depend  on  the  ap- 
probation of  Madame  du  DefFand  or  the  opinion  of 
Madame  d'Epinay.  They  are  badly  prepared,  and 
above  all  in  a  bad  position,  to  judge  and  even  to 
understand  these  works.  The  meaning  is  beyond 
them,  as  also  is  that  of  the  Histoire  naturelle^  and 
even  of  Candide  and  the  Homme  aux  quarante  Ecus. 
But  they  made  up  for  it  by  gathering  around  them, 
and  so  completing  the  picture,  if  not  Voltaire  or 
Buffon,  at  least  Saint-Lambert  and  Marmontel,  Duclos 
and  Voisenon,  Bernis  and  BoufHers,  Laharpe  and 
Thomas,  Grimm,  Galiani,  Chamfort  and  Rivarol, 
Delille  and  Morellet.  These  are  the  men  who  are 
wanted,  men  whose  merit  I  do  not  deny,  who  are 
far  from  being  worthless,  who  can  speak,  can  write, 
can  turn  a  madrigal  or  give  point  to  an  epigram,  draw 
up  a  speech  or  rhyme  a  tragedy,  but  men,  in  short, 
whose  work  has  perished  almost  entirely  with  them- 
selves, and  who  could  be  cut  out  of  the  history  of  the 
century  and  almost  not  be  missed. 

I  am  wrong  and  must  correct  myself :  they  suc- 
ceeded at  least  in  reducing  the  material  of  observa- 
tion, and,  by  force  of  perfecting  the  language,  they 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

succeeded  in  weakening  it.  I  have  said  that  they 
could  write  :  this  is  not  sufficient.  Never  was  writing 
more  clear,  for  never  was  style  more  abstract :  it  is 
the  limpidity  of  pure  water,  and  it  is  also,  and  above 
all,  the  insipidity.  Why  are  the  little  verses  of  the 
Chevalier  de  BouiBers  not  by  the  Abbe  de  Bernis, 
just  as  a  tragedy  of  Marmontel  might  be  by 
La  Harpe,  or  a  saying  of  Rivarol  by  Chamfort  ? 
Differences  in  spirit  vanish  one  after  the  other  in  the 
lack  of  distinction  in  the  style  ;  a  man  must  speak  like 
everybody  to  be  sure  to  be  understood  by  everybody  ; 
and  good  taste  ceases  at  the  precise  point  where 
originality  begins.  At  this  period  of  the  century 
the  coincidence  had  become  perfect :  the  proprieties 
of  society  are  the  very  laws  of  the  art  of  writ- 
ing. Words  are  now  but  signs  of  a  conventional 
algebra,  and  the  laws  of  hard  logic  regulate  their  uni- 
form arrangement.  But  it  is  not  BufFon  or  Voltaire 
who  is  to  be  blamed  for  this,  as  they  have  often  been, 
and  still  less  is  it  Rousseau  ;  it  is  the  salons  ;  and  it 
is  the  writers  who  aimed,  like  those  I  have  just  men- 
tioned, only  at  the  approbation  of  the  salons, — if  indeed 
they  did  not  write  solely  to  be  admitted  into  them. 

It  is  told  that,  at  Madame  GeofFrin's,  every  time  the 
conversation  threatened  to  break  loose  "  on  authority, 
religion,  politics,  morality,  people  in  office  or  men  in 
power,"  the  hostess  hastened  to  check  the  offenders 
with  an  "  Oh,  isn't  this  good  ! "  and  to  send  them,  as 
she  said  herself,  to  make  their  noisy  gossip  elsewhere. 

50 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

This  is  the  last  reproach  which  can  be  brought  against 
the  salons.  At  no  time,  perhaps,  and  certainly  not 
under  the  old  regime,  was  it  possible  to  discuss  the 
great  questions,  and  still  less  to  plunge  deep  into  them, 
for  there  was  really  nothing  in  the  world,  according 
to  the  circumstances,  more  pedantic  or  fantastic. 
Everything  might  be  touched  upon,  but  nothing  was 
to  be  examined  deeply  ;  everything  might  be  spoken 
about,  but  without  being  considered  in  its  essentials. 
Besides  that  it  is  polite  to  share  the  opinion  of  every- 
body else,  we  do  not  meet  together  to  weary,  but  on 
the  contrary  to  amuse  ourselves.  If,  then,  we  have  any 
crotchets,  no  matter  their  nature,  or  should  they  be 
metaphysical,  nothing  would  be  more  out  of  place 
than  to  make  them  public  and  thereby  disturb  those 
who  take  no  interest  in  them.  This  is  the  rule  of  the 
game,  and  the  rule  is  good.  It  is  only  regrettable 
when  the  habits  of  conversation  in  society  are  carried 
into  the  art  of  writing,  and  this  is  what  happened  in  the 
history  of  our  literature.  All  the  questions  that  can 
naturally  interest  worthy  people  we  have  treated,  under 
the  influence  of  the  salons,  as  they  would  be  treated 
there,  and  only  as  they  could  possibly  be  treated  there, 
that  is  to  say,  pleasantly  and  superficially.  *'  To  speak 
always  nobly  of  mean  things,  and  simply  enough  of 
lofty  things  "  has  thus  become  the  law  of  our  writers,  as 
it  was  of  conversation.  Out  of  deference  to  women, 
or,  perhaps,  without  thinking  of  it,  and  by  the  mere 
contagion  of  example,  some  very  great  writers,  such  as 

51 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

Montesquieu,  aimed  at  dealing  in  a  grave  manner  with 
the  most  futile  objects,  and  made  a  mannerism  of  so 
doing ;  and  others,  such  as  Voltaire,  at  deciding  by  an 
epigram,  often  enough  of  very  doubtful  taste,  the  most 
grave  questions.  Thus  it  foUow^s  that  the  salons  are 
in  this  way  responsible,  to  say  nothing  about  other 
matters,  for  all  the  artificiality  and  superficiality  of  the 
Esprit  des  Lots  and  of  the  Essai  sur  les  Mceurs. 

There  are,  too,  certain  questions  of  the  most  serious 
and  lofty  nature,  which  the  salons  excluded  from  the 
range  of  our  authors  and  our  literature,  just  as  they 
had  always  excluded  them  from  conversation.  "^7- 
though  conversation  ought  always  to  be  equally  natural  and 
reasonable^'*  wrote,  in  1680,  Mademoiselle  de  Scudery, 
*'  /  admit  for  all  that  that  there  are  occasions  when 
even  the  sciences  can  enter  into  it  with  a  good  grace " ; 
and  this  could  not  have  been  said  better,  nor  could  it 
at  the  same  time  be  more  entirely  just.  The  salons 
were  not  made  for  discussions,  for  example,  on  Semitic 
inscriptions  or  comparative  anatomy.  Not  only  the 
pure  sciences,  but  what  are  called  the  applied  sciences, 
and  politics,  and  social  economy  could  not  "  enter  with 
a  good  grace  "  into  polite  conversation,  and  still  less, 
undoubtedly,  history,  philosophy,  and  religion.  Con- 
sequently they  have  not  entered  into  it,  nor  into  our 
literature.  It  is  an  astonishing  thing  for  foreigners, 
especially  for  Germans  and  Englishmen,  perhaps  also 
for  Russians,  and  generally  for  men  of  the  North,  to 
note  the  indifference  of  our  writers  to  the  problems 

52 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

which  torment  the  soul  of  Faust  or  Hamlet.  And, 
indeed,  these  questions  are  hardly  ever  treated  in  the 
salons,  in  spite  of  the  strange  way  in  which  they  often 
trouble  women.  Their  attention  is  directed  to  quite 
other  objects.  The  present  life,  and  only  its  outmost 
part,  the  social  life  and  its  relations,  occupies  and 
absorbs  them  entirely  ;  and  our  writers,  to  be  on  good 
terms  with  them,  confine  and  absorb  themselves  in  it, 
and  are  absorbed  in  it  with  them.  One  is  sorry  for 
the  French  genius  to  see  the  air  of  unconcern,  and  the 
tone  of  elegant  badinage  with  which  even  a  Voltaire, 
in  his  pamphlets,  his  ConteSy  and  his  Dictionnaire 
philosophique^  ridicules  or  scouts,  despite  all  his  genius, 
whatever  he  does  not  understand.  If  we  had  not  had 
our  Protestants ;  if  we  had  not  had  our  Jansenists, 
those  of  the  early  times,  and  Pascal  above  all  ;  if  we 
had  not  had  our  great  preachers,  Bossuet,  Bourdaloue, 
and  even  Massillon  ;  if  we  had  not  had  Rousseau,  the 
Profession  de  foi  du  Vicaire  Savoyard  and  the  Lettres 
de  la  Montagne^  it  would  be  terrible  to  think  of  the 
number  of  questions  to  which  our  classic  literature 
remains  almost  entirely  a  stranger.  What  does 
Racine  think  of  free-will,  and  Moliere  of  destiny  ? 
The  salons  have  lightened,  as  it  were,  our  literature 
of  its  philosophic  ballast.  And  if,  towards  the  end  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  in  the  foreboding  of  a  uni- 
versal catastrophe,  and  in  that  slightly  feverish  state  of 
agitation  which  precedes  great  crises,  some  of  them 
broach  for  the  first  time  the  discussion  of  the  public 

53 


BRUNETlfeRE'S  ESSAYS 

interest,  and  the  political  and  social  questions  of  the 
immediate  future,  these  other  questions  of  which  we 
are  speaking,  and  which  are  vital  in  another  way,  since 
the  conduct  and  direction  of  life  depend  on  them,  are 
still  refused  admittance.  They  have  not  yet  forced 
the  door. 

Let  us  hasten  to  admit — not  to  expose  ourselves 
to  the  reproach  of  pedantry,  to  exaggerate  no- 
thing, to  place  the  good  side  by  side  with  the 
bad  —  that  the  salons  were  able  to  compensate  in 
some  measure  for  what  they  deprived  us  of,  and 
that  the  losses  which  we  enumerate  have  been  bal- 
anced by  real  gains.  True,  we  have  neither  Milton 
nor  Shakespeare,  neither  a  Paradise  Lost  nor  a  Hamlet ; 
we  have  neither  Goethe  nor  Kant ;  but  in  no  litera- 
ture, since  Letters  have  been  written,  are  there  any 
that  can  be  compared  with  the  Correspondence  of  Vol- 
taire or  Madame  de  Sevigne,  or  even  with  that  of 
Madame  du  DefFand  or  Mademoiselle  de  Lespinasse  ; 
and  this  is  already  something.  Likewise,  in  what 
other  literature  can  be  found  that  succession  of  pene- 
trating moralists  who,  from  Montaigne  to  Rivarol, 
one  after  the  other,  with  as  much  steadiness  as  delicacy 
of  hand,  have  anatomised  the  social  and  moral  man 
even  to  his  imperceptible  fibres  ?  And  with  what- 
ever brilliance  the  English  novel  may  have  shone, 
in  the  present  century  still  more  than  in  the  last, 
I  am  not  sure  if,  on  making  the  necessary  ex- 
ceptions,  I    do    not    still    prefer    the    vein    of    the 

54 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

French  novel.  I  could  say  much  more,  if  I  chose, 
about  the  theatre,  which  for  the  last  two  hundred 
years  or  more  has  become  our  privilege  and  mono- 
poly. And  it  must  be  admitted  that  it  is  to  the 
influence  of  women,  to  the  life  of  the  salons  and  the 
court,  to  the  perfection  of  the  spirit  of  sociability, 
that  this  is  really  due. 

"  It  is  only  women  who  can  express  in  a  single 
word  a  whole  emotion  and  render  delicately  a  delicate 
thought "  ;  and  when  La  Bruyere,  before  even  the 
letters  of  Madame  de  Sevigne  were  known,  thus 
praised  the  superiority  of  women  in  letter-writing, 
he  found  the  explanation  of  it  in  their  very  effort 
towards  preciosity.  And  in  truth  this  anxiety  to 
speak  well — so  far  as  it  consists  in  enhancing,  by 
the  expression  or  the  sentiment,  by  the  vivacity  of 
a  turn  or  the  vmexpectedness  of  a  touch,  things  that 
are  ordinary  or  common,  in  giving  to  good  sense 
even  and  to  banality  the  charm  and  piquancy  of 
paradox,  in  passing  over  in  silence  precisely  that 
which  is  wished  to  be  heard,  or  in  diminishing,  with- 
out appearing  to  do  so,  the  importance  or  gravity 
of  what  is  said  —  is  not  this  anxiety  to  speak  well 
preciosity  itself,  understood  as  it  should  be,  and  is 
it  not  the  basis  of  epistolary  style  ?  Have  you 
ever  asked  yourself  why  it  is  that  the  letters  of 
so  many  great  writers  —  the  few  we  have  of  this 
same  La  Bruyere,  those  of  Boileau,  those  of 
Racine,    or   also,    in    the   eighteenth    century,    those 

55 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

of  Montesquieu,  of  Rousseau  often,  and  BufFon 
always  —  give  such  a  bad  and  far-away  like- 
ness of  their  authors,  correspond  so  little  to  their 
works,  and  rather  contradict  the  -?idea  we  had 
formed  of  them  ?  It  is  because  they  do  not 
write  them  for  the  pleasure  of  writing  them,  but 
from  particular  reasons,  to  fulfil  their  obligations, 
from  duty  rather  than  from  inclination.  Women, 
on  the  contrary,  put  their  whole  soul  into  them, 
their  invincible  desire  of  pleasing,  all  the  abundance 
and  vivacity  of  their  conversation.  They  are  not 
content  with  mentioning  things,  they  mention  them 
again,  and  in  twenty  ways,  each  way  adding  some- 
thing unexpected  to  the  elegance  of  the  others. 
Their  simple  manner  does  not  come  naturally ;  it  is 
acquired.  They  owe  it  to  their  experience  in  society, 
or,  rather,  it  is  their  nature  not  to  be  natural,  and  to 
do  with  ease,  good  humour,  and  simplicity  what  men 
do  only  with  difficulty,  bungling,  and  clumsiness.  As 
society  is  their  element  and  the  salons  their  universe, 
they  are  only  truly  and  absolutely  women  in  enter- 
ing into  society  and  reigning  in  the  salons.  In 
their  letters,  therefore,  are  to  be  found  that  art  of 
"perverting  facts"  which  is  the  basis  of  modern  con- 
versation, these  unusual  metaphors  and  periphrases 
which  serve  to  disguise  what  they  cannot  say  crudely, 
that  "spirit  of  politeness"  which  warns  them  on  every 
occasion  to  stop  in  time,  that  playfulness  which  in- 
spires "a  disposition  to  make  use  of  everything  and 

56 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

be  wearied  with  nothing."  In  emancipating  women, 
the  spirit  of  society  permitted  them  to  be  them- 
selves, but  undoubtedly  they  are  themselves  only  in 
so  far  as  they  differ  from  men,  and  it  is  in  letter- 
writing,  which  is  most  in  their  line,  that  they  have 
shown  these  differences  and  shown  their  originality. 
Some  men  of  wit,  ready  and  quick  like  them,  have 
now  and  then  succeeded  in  robbing  them  of  some- 
thing— Voltaire,  for  example,  and — if  only  he  had 
not  had  such  a  strong  hankering  after  the  gross,  to 
say  nothing  more — the  author  of  the  Lettres  a 
Mademoiselle  Voland. 

No  more  need  we  doubt  that  the  penetration  of 
our  moralists  has  been  sharpened  by  contact  with 
women  in  the  subtle  atmosphere  of  the  salons. 
Under  the  uniformity  of  appearance  and  outward 
correctness  of  bearing,  it  soon  became  a  malicious 
occupation  to  endeavour  to  discover  and  recognise 
shades  of  difference.  La  Rochefoucauld  and  La 
Bruyere  in  the  seventeenth  century  particularly  ex- 
celled in  this  ;  Rivarol  and  Chamfort  a  little  later, 
towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth.  How  often 
"gravity  is  a  mysterious  carriage  of  the  body  in- 
vented to  cover  the  defects  of  the  mind "  we  might 
not  know  but  for  La  Rochefoucauld  ;  and  he  himself 
recognised  this  only  by  being  struck,  in  the  salon 
of  Madame  de  Sable  or  of  Madame  de  La  Fayette, 
with  the  stupidity  of  a  magistrate  or  the  majestic 
nullity  of  a  bishop.     That  a  man   without  position 

57 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

"cannot  be  benevolent,  but  only  good-natured,"  as 
Chamfort  remarked,  is  another  of  these  fine  distinc- 
tions which  can  be  hardly  recognised  in  everyday 
experience  :  they  are  too  imperceptible  ;  opportunity 
and  leisure  are  necessary  to  observe  them.  Thanks 
to  the  life  of  the  salons  and  of  the  court,  our 
moralists,  if  they  have  too  often  lost  sight  of  the 
individual  man,  have  at  least  understood  and  described 
the  essential  character  of  the  universal  man,  or  better 
still  of  the  social  man.  They  have  advanced  the 
dissection  of  him,  as  I  said,  to  the  last  degree  of 
delicacy  and  precision.  And,  perfecting  the  language 
at  the  same  time  as  thein  powers  of  observation, 
their  means  of  expression,  if  I  may  say  so,  at  the 
same  time  as  their  eyes,  while  inimitable  in  the  art 
of  discovering  shades  of  distinction,  they  are  equally 
so  in  the  almost  infinite  resources  they  have  found 
in  the  use  of  the  poorest  vocabulary  and  the  severest 
syntax. 

This  is  not  yet  all,  and  I  consider  it  would  be 
an  inexcusable  omission  not  to  credit  the  influence 
of  the  salons  and  women  with  one  part  at  least  in 
the  rise  of  the  modern  drama  and  novel.  In 
purifying  love,  in  spiritualising  it,  in  mingling  senti- 
ment with  it — yet  without  letting  the  devil  lose  his 
share,  as  the  saying  goes — in  making  it  a  topic  of 
conversation,  women  have  made  it,  in  France,  the 
great  question  of  the  nation.  If  we  omit  those  whose 
profession   forbids  them  to   speak  of  the  passions  of 

58 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

love  otherwise  than  to  deplore  them  and  condemn 
their  errors,  our  modern  literature  is  taken  up  entirely 
with  this  topic,  as  was  the  talk  in  the  salon  of  Madame 
de  Lambert  or  of  Madame  de  Rambouillet.  And  for 
the  last  two  hundred  and  fifty  years,  that  is  to  say 
since  the  birth  or  the  formation  of  polite  society, 
I  do  not  think  that  there  is  any  literature,  not  even 
the  Italian,  which  is  richer  in  tales  of  gallantry  and 
emotion,  and  generally  of  love.  D'Urfe  was  the  first ; 
Racine  followed  him — too  clever,  though  shrinking 
from  the  salons  and  fleeing  the  Precieuses,  not  to 
avail  himself  of  whatever  he  found  in  them  to  suit 
the  nature  of  his  genius ;  then  came  Marivaux,  then  . 
Prevost,  then  Rousseau,  all  adding  to  it  the  flame 
of  passion  ;  and  Bernardin  de  Saint-Pierre,  and  the 
author  of  Atala ;  and  the  author  of  Delphine  ,•  and  the 
author  of  Indiana^  of  Valentine^  of  yacques^  of  Mau- 
prat^  and  Balzac  ;  and  after  them  so  many  others  ! 
Need  we  add  the  poets,  Lamartine  at  least,  and 
Musset,  if  not  Hugo  ?  If  the  salons  really  did  not 
do  everything,  it  is  they,  at  the  first  at  any  rate, 
— by  directing  manners  towards  gallantry,  to  say 
the  least,  as  much  as  towards  politeness — who  drew 
the  mass  of  writers  after  them.  It  is  they  who,  in 
a  literature  which  had  been  rational  so  far,  or  at 
least  intellectual,  made  sentiment  play  the  part  it 
had  been  so  long  denied.  It  is  they  who  began  by 
distinguishing,  noting,  and  classifying  for  us  the 
changing  shades  of  the  same  sentiment  or  the  same 

59 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

passion  ;  they  who  planned,  and  then  enriched,  that 
Carte  de  Tendre  which  is  a  laughing-stock,  but  which, 
after  all,  novelists  are  only  eternally  running  over 
in  the  search  of  new  countries  and  an  unexplored 
corner.  And  it  is  they,  though  they  have  im- 
poverished the  language  of  description,  who  have 
supplied  the  language  of  observation  and  psycho- 
logical analysis  ;  and  perhaps  also  that  of  the  dialogue 
for  our  dramatic  authors.  And  since  I  can  here 
only  indicate  what  would  require  too  much  space 
to  show  clearly,  it  is  this,  in  short,  that  can  be 
verified  by  a  mere  glance  at  the  history  of  foreign 
literatures,  in  which  the  drama  and  the  novel  have 
been  at  all  times,  as  with  us,  exactly  what  the  spirit 
of  sociability  has  made  them. 

These  are  undoubtedly  many  services — so  many 
services  that  I  really  hesitate  while  on  the  point  of 
concluding,  and  ask  myself  if  the  best  conclusion 
would  not  be  to  give  up  the  search  for  one.  For, 
do  you  not  care  for  the  salons  and  do  you  happen 
to  hold  the  same  ideas  on  women  as  the  Arnolphe 
of  the  Ecole  des  Femmes  or  the  Chrysale  of  the  Femmes 
savantes^  that  is  to  say,  the  same  as  Moliere  ?  Then 
I  have  spoken  of  the  evil  which  the  salons  have  done 
us,  and  some  of  even  our  greatest  writers.  But, 
on  the  contrary,  do  you  care  for  the  salons  and 
hold  the  same  ideas  on  them  as  Madame  de  Lambert 
or    Madame    de    Rambouillet  ?      This   can    be   done 

without   literary   scruple,   and    I    have    endeavoured 

60 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

to  show  the  reasons  why.  What  everybody  must 
at  least  admit  is  that  this  is  a  sign  by  which  great 
and  durable  influences  are  to  be  recognised, — the 
difficulty  of  deciding  definitely  for  or  against  them. 
I  may  add  that  this  has  been  more  than  once  over- 
looked, by  the  one  party  in  their  too  violent  attacks 
on  the  Precieuses,  by  the  other  in  their  immoderate 
praise  of  the  eighteenth  century  salons,  and  by  the 
one  as  by  the  other  precisely  from  not  having  ap- 
preciated this  influence  at  its  true  value ;  and  this  is 
certainly  one  conclusion. 

But  if  now  we  seek  to  characterise  in  one  word 
the  nature  of  this  influence,  we  may  say  that  women 
have  given  the  French  genius  its  form.  While  in 
other  literatures,  generally,  the  great  writers  create 
in  a  way  at  once  the  matter  and  the  form  of  their 
work,  and  are  masters,  at  the  very  least,  of  one 
as  well  as  the  other,  it  is  to  be  remarked  that  in 
our  literature  they  must,  to  be  received,  accom- 
modate their  matter  to  2.  form  which  is  given  or  agreed 
upon  beforehand.  In  French  there  are  rules  of  the 
art  of  writing  as  of  that  of  composing, — or  rather 
they  are  the  same, — which  we  call  formal^  that  is  to 
say  pre-existent  to  the  ideas  which  are  to  be  expressed. 
So  the  women  have  decided.  What  they  wished 
was  that  the  writer  should  not  be  allowed  to  re- 
make the  language  in  his  own  image,  and,  were 
he  to   try   to,   that    he   should    incur    their    disgrace 

and   be  considered   a   barbarian.     They  wished  like- 

61 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

wise  that  if  a  person  wrote,  it  should  be  with  the 
intention  of  being  read  and  consequently  under- 
stood, and  that  he  should  not  be  contented  with 
being  understood  by  himself,  and  still  less  by  him- 
self alone.  They  wished,  also,  that  there  should 
be  no  sentiment,  no  matter  how  subtle,  and  no 
thought,  no  matter  how  profound,  that  could  not 
be  expressed  by  the  words  and  grammar  of  modern 
usage.  They  wished,  in  short,  that  elegance  should 
be  given  to  those  matters  which  least  allow  of  it, 
and  that  there  should  never  be  any  escape,  under 
any  pretext  whatever,  from  the  laws  of  the  art  of 
pleasing.  This  is  why  all  revolutions  in  taste  have 
begun,  in  France,  by  being  revolutions  in  language  : 
an  attempt  to  introduce  into  literary  usage  habits 
of  language  which  everyday  usage  had  expelled 
from  it,  or,  inversely,  to  cleanse  the  good  usage 
of  the  mud  which  the  revolutionaries  had  been 
able  to  deposit.  But,  throughout  these  revolu- 
tions, most  of  which  succeeded  only  in  so  far  as 
they  had  their  support,  the  women  always  pursued 
the  design  they  had  formed — to  subject  sooner  or 
later  the  innovators  themselves  to  the  need  of  clear- 
ness, justness,  and  order.  Whatever  subject  one 
treats  in  French,  if  he  wishes  to  treat  it  as  an  author, 
he  must  circumscribe  and  limit  it,  transpose  it  from 
its  special  and  technical  language  into  the  language 
of  everybody,  spare  the  reader  the  fatigue  of  atten- 
tion,   and    lead    him,    in   short,  to    believe    that   our 

62 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

thoughts  have  for  long  been  his,  and  were  his  even 
before  they  were  ours.  This  is  the  secret,  for  the 
last  two  hundred  years,  of  the  diffusion  of  the 
French  language  :  French  books  explain  each  other. 
But  perhaps  this  is  also  the  secret  of  the  often 
strange  mistakes  which  the  Germans  or  English 
make  about  our  writers.  We  alone,  indeed,  under 
this  uniformity  of  manner,  and  after  much  study, 
are  capable  of  distinguishing  in  our  books  the 
mediocre  from  the  excellent,  the  commonplace 
from  the  original,  and  a  clever  rhetorician  from  a 
very  great  writer.  I  have  so  many  appropriate 
names  at  the  end  of  my  pen,  and  so  many  titles, 
that  I  prefer  not  to  give  any. 

As  to  the  utility  of  this  discipline,  I  consider  it 
good,  if  we  write  solely  to  please ;  less  good,  as  I  have 
said,  if  we  aim  at  something  higher,  but  yet  still  good. 
"  We  warn  those  who  read  these  writings,"  said  Bossuet 
once,  in  a  preface,  "  that  they  must  expect  to  find  in 
many  places  very  subtle  matters  which  may  give  them 
trouble  to  read^  but  which  I  cannot  convey  to  the 
minds  of  men  without  their  attention,  nor  without 
that  attention  being  troublesome."  And  it  is  certain 
that  there  are  some  matters  which  can  receive  only 
a  certain  degree  of  clearness,  which  cannot  be  treated 
cursorily,  which  are  not  to  be  skimmed,  which 
must  be  fathomed  ;  but  perhaps  also  we  need  to  be 
Bossuet  to  dare  to  touch  them.  Most  of  our  great 
writers  have  shaken    off  the  yoke    of  this  discipline, 

63 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

and  it  is  clear  that  they  have  been  right,  but  it  will 
always  be  furiously  delicate,  as  our  Precieuses  used  to 
say,  to  try  to  imitate  them  in  this  point.  Voltaire 
even,  who  dared  so  much,  had  not  this  audacity,  or 
at  least  he  had  it  only  on  the  example  of  Rousseau. 
The  fact  is  that  to  revolt  against  conventions  we 
must  be  sure  of  having  genius,  or  at  least  of  having 
very  new  truths  to  proclaim,  of  speaking  in  a  very 
great  cause,  of  acting  in  the  name  of  very  great  in- 
terests. And  since  it  is  evident  that  the  one  is  as  rare 
as  the  other,  the  best  course  is  to  follow  traditions 
when  they  have  been  fixed,  as  is  here  the  case,  by 
the  most  worthy  people  who  have  preceded  us,  when 
these  are,  moreover,  conformable  to  the  genius  of  the 
race,  and  have,  in  short,  assured  in  the  world  the 
empire  of  the  national  spirit. 

For  all  these  reasons  let  us  hope,  in  conclusion, 
with  M.  Jacquinet — in  his  interesting  Introduction  to 
his  Recueil  de  morceaux  choisis — that  his  collection,  and 
the  pleasure  which  everybody  will  undoubtedly  take  in 
perusing  it,  will  inspire  someone  with  the  ambition 
of  writing  this  History  of  Polite  Society  —  of  which 
a  woman,  who  unfortunately  lacked  the  ability, 
would  seem  to  have  had  the  first  idea ;  of  which 
Roederer,  in  a  curious  book,  and  Victor  Cousin,  in  a 
well  known  one,  have  sketched  only  the  first  chapters ; 
and  from  which  we  may  draw  quite  different  conclu- 
sions, and   many  more  too,  than  they  have.     Let  us 

only  advise  this  future  historian  not  to  believe  for  a 

64 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

moment  this  melancholy  Thomas  and  this  terrible 
Diderot,  nor,  when  discussing  women,  to  think  of 
"  dipping  his  pen  in  the  rainbow  "  or  of  shaking  over 
his  writing  "  the  dust  of  the  wings  of  butterflies." 
Despite  appearances,  false  brilliance  would  be  no- 
where more  unsuitable.  There  is  need  of  taste  rather 
than  of  show  ;  of  acuteness,  but  not  of  eloquence  ; 
of  as  much  discretion  in  praise  as  moderation  in 
criticism  ;  of  a  simple  and  quite  uniform  style.  And 
let  us  beg  of  him  to  hasten  with  this  book,  if  he  has 
no  special  reason  for  delay,  for  at  the  rate  at  which 
things  are  going,  we  may  soon  lose  entirely  the  sense 
and  appreciation  of  those  manners  which  have  quite 
passed  away. 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  MOLIERE 

I  KNOW  it  is  difficult  to  make  oneself  understood,  and 
I  willingly  admit  that  whoever  does  not  succeed  in 
doing  so  has  himself  to  blame.  But  really,  with 
every  allowance  for  my  own  incompetence,  I  would 
never  have  believed  it  would  have  been  so  hard  to 
convince  certain  Frenchmen — dramatic  authors,  pro- 
fessors, journalists,  and  lecturers — that  Moliere  would 
not  be  Moliere  had  he  not  thought  sometimes ; 
that  there  is  something  more  in  him  than  a  classic 
Labiche  ;  and  that  after  seeing  the  Ecole  des  Femmes 
or  the  Malade  imaginaire^  and  laughing  heartily  at 
Arnolphe  or  the  worthy  Argan,  v^^e  still  carry  away 
with  us  something  to  think  over  for  a  long  time. 
For  having  dared  to  say  so,  indeed,  I  find  that  I  am 
reminded  on  all  hands  of  the  false  modesty  which  is 
expected  of  the  commentator,  and  I  vv^ould  have  re- 
quired to  treat  Moliere  as  a  merry-andrew  or  buffoon, 
in  order  not  to  cause  alarm  among  those  who  will  on 
no  account  allow  their  notion  of  him  to  be  disturbed  ; 
or  rather,  according  to  their  view,  it  is  in  this  way 
that  he  will  now  have  to  be  treated. 

"  Come  away,  Baptiste,  make  us  laugh,"  said  Moliere 
66 


ESSAYS  IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

to  LuUi,  when  he  felt  the  need  of  laughing  at  other 
fooling  than  his  own — which,  moreover,  is  not  always 
clever, — and  the  story  goes  that  the  Florentine  did 
his  best.  So  too  it  seems  that  we  do  not  nowadays 
ask  more  of  him  whom  his  century  called  "the  con- 
templator  "  than  amusement.  Jester  he  was,  and  jester 
let  him  remain  !  His  whole  business  is  to  amuse 
us,  and  if  we  haven't  paid  for  it,  our  fathers  have  ! 
Only  we  forget  that  he  would  be  dead,  like  so  many 
others  who  none  the  less  did  not  fail  to  amuse  the 
good  folk  of  their  time,  had  there  been  nothing  more 
in  his  work  than  in  theirs  ;  and  that,  since  we  must 
possess  for  the  understanding  of  the  Ecole  des  Femmes 
or  Tartufe  what  is  ironically  called  "enlightenment" 
and  "intellect,"  which  are  quite  unnecessary  for  the 
appreciation  of  La  Cagnotte,  this  is  just  the  reason 
why  he  is  Moliere. 

I  shall  lay  stress  at  the  outset  on  this  remark. 
Nobody  now  is  unaware  that  the  subject  of  the  Ecole 
des  Femtnesy  which  was  borrowed  by  Moliere  from 
Scarron,  is  essentially  the  same  as  that  of  the  Folies 
amoureuses  and  the  Barbier  de  Seville.  There  is  the 
same  situation,  the  same  intrigue,  the  same  denoue- 
ment. There  are  the  same  characters  too  ;  Bartholo, 
Albert,  or  Arnolphe,  it  is  still  the  same  guardian  who 
is  duped  ;  Rosine,  Agathe,  or  Agnes,  it  is  still  the  same 
artless  girl  who  makes  game  of  him  ;  Almaviva,  Eraste, 
or  Horace,  it  is  still  the  same  lover  who  lends  his  aid, 

young,  resourceful,  and  triumphant.    Yet,  in  whatever 

67 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

esteem  we  hold  Beaumarchais  or  Regnard,  they  are 
not  Moliere,  neither  in  build  nor  in  class,  nor  perhaps 
in  species,  and  though  it  is  possible  to  prefer  them  to 
him,  we  never  venture  a  comparison.  Why  is  this  ? 
For  the  fact  of  being  the  first  of  the  three  could  not 
be  considered  so  great  a  merit  in  the  author  of  the 
Ecole  des  Femmes.  And  even  if  this  were  a  merit,  it 
could  not  belong  to  him  but  to  Scarron,  as  we  have 
just  said,  and  not  even  to  Scarron,  but  to  Donna  Maria 
de  Zayas  y  Sotomayor,  the  Spanish  novelist  from  whom 
Scarron  himself  imitated  his  Precaution  inutile.  In 
another  respect,  good  judges,  delicate  and  subtle  judges, 
have  been  able  to  hold,  and  not  without  reason,  that 
the  verses  of  Moliere  have  not  in  general  the  elegance 
and  ease,  the  grace  and  facility  of  those  of  Regnard  : 
that  his  style,  though  more  podded  perhaps,  to  use 
Sainte-Beuve's  happy  expression,  is  yet  not  so  lively, 
smart,  or  clever,  nor  its  air  so  free  and  sprightly.  And 
who  will  refuse  to  admit  that,  if  the  plot  of  the 
Barbier  de  Seville  is  not  better  than  that  of  the  Ecole 
des  Femmes^  it  is  at  least  in  a  way  more  implex^  as  used 
to  be  said,  more  ingenious,  richer  in  surprises,  above 
all  nearer  our  modern  taste  ?  From  Moliere  to  Beau- 
marchais, during  the  insensible  decadence  of  all  the 
other  parts  of  the  dramatic  art,  one  alone  has  been 
perfected,  and  this  is  precisely  the  intrigue  ;  and  the 
comedy  of  Beaumarchais  marks  the  principal  epoch  in 
this  progress. 

Since,  then,  it  is  neither  by  the  complexity  nor  the 
68 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

ingeniousness  of  the  intrigue,  nor  by  quality  of  style, 
nor  novelty  of  invention,  that  Moliere  is  as  superior 
to  his  first  model  as  to  his  imitators,  what  is  there 
left,  and  what  conclusion  is  to  be  drawn  ?  There  is 
left  this,  that  it  is  by  the  depth  of  the  penetration 
with  which  he  has  drawn  his  characters ;  by  the 
truth  of  an  imitation  of  life  which  could  not  suc- 
ceed but  from  a  certain  manner,  at  once  personal 
and  original,  of  seeing,  understanding,  and  judging 
life  itself;  in  one  word,  by  the  reach,  or,  in  another, 
by  the  philosophy  of  his  work. 

It  is  this  philosophy  which,  in  the  following  pages, 
I  shall  try  to  define  and  characterise.  Not  that  I 
wish,  as  may  be  suspected,  to  ascribe  to  the  author  of 
the  Fourberies  de  Scapin  what  is  called  a  connected 
system.  I  shall  not  forget  that  I  am  speaking  of  a 
dramatic  author,  and  that  Tartufe^  the  Ecole  des 
FemmeSj  and  the  Malade  imaginaire  are  primarily 
comedies.  But  what  I  shall  not  forget  also  is  that 
Moliere  thinks ;  and  since  he  makes  me  think,  I 
wish  to  know  on  what  ?  Since  he  forces  me  to 
reflect  on  certain  questions,  I  wish  to  know  what 
precisely  these  questions  are.  Since  he  has  put  them, 
I  wish  to  know  how  he  has  decided  them.  And  if 
these  questions  do  still  concern  us,  and  are  still  of 
living  interest,  I  wish  to  know,  in  short,  how  far  I 
am  myself  for  or  against  Moliere.  His  comedies  are 
not  exactly  theses^  but  they  are  not   very   far    from 

being   so.      They    have    more   connection    with    the 

69 


BRUNETlfeRFS  ESSAYS 

Fils  naturel  than  with  Adrienne  Lecouvreur,  or  with 
the  Ami  des  Femmes  than  with  Mademoiselle  de  Belle- 
hie.  Nothing  could  be  more  unlike  anecdotes 
stretched  over  five  acts.  In  this  sense,  the  phil- 
osophy of  Moliere  may  be  said  to  be  Moliere  himself, 
and  I  shall  endeavour  to  show  that,  properly  under- 
stood, it  is  Moliere  in  his  entirety. 


I 

The  Philosophy  of  Nature 

It  does  not  appear  that  he  took  any  trouble  to  dis- 
guise his  philosophy,  nor  consequently  is  it  difficult 
to  recognise  or  to  name.  Naturalistic  or  realistic^ 
what  the  comedy  of  Moliere  always  preaches,  by  its 
faults  as  much  as  by  its  merits,  is  the  imitation  of 
nature ;  and  its  great  lesson  in  aesthetics  and  in 
morality,  is  that  we  must  submit,  and,  if  we  can, 
conform  to  nature.  By  this,  by  the  endeavour  after 
a  faithful  imitation  of  nature,  is  to  be  explained  the 
subordination,  in  his  plays,  of  the  situations  to  the 
characters  ;  the  simplicity  of  the  intrigues,  the  most  of 
which  are  only  "  scenes  of  private  life  "  ;  the  unsatis- 
factoriness  of  the  denouements,  which,  from  the  very 
fact  that  they   are    not    denouements,   bear   a   closer 

resemblance  to  life,  where   nothing    begins  or  ends. 

70 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

By  this  also  is  to  be  explained  the  quality  and  the 
depth  of  the  comic  art  of  Moliere.  For  if,  among 
the  many  ways  of  provoking  laughter,  Moliere  knew 
too  well  his  triple  business  of  author,  actor,  and 
manager  to  despise  or  overlook  any  of  them,  not 
excepting  the  easiest  and  commonest,  there  is  yet  one 
which  he  prefers,  and  this  way  consists  in  making 
merry  over  habits  or  prejudices  which  are  conquered 
by  the  all-powerfulness  of  nature.  And  by  this  still, 
by  his  confidence  in  nature,  is  to  be  explained  also,  and 
above  all,  the  character  of  his  satire,  since  he  directed 
it  only  against  those  whose  fault  or  absurdity  lay  in 
disguising,  falsifying,  corrupting,  restraining,  or  en- 
deavouring to  coerce  nature. 

In  the  same  way  he  never  inveighed  against  licen- 
tiousness or  debauchery  ;  he  never  inveighed  against 
ambition :  he  never  seems  even  to  have  had  the 
intention  of  attacking  them.  These  are  vices  which 
are  instinctive  and  conformable  to  nature  :  they  are 
self-confessed,  and  sometimes  even  vaunted.  What 
more  natural  in  a  man  than  to  wish  to  raise  himself 
above  his  fellows,  unless  it  be  to  play  with  the  pleasures 
of  life  ?  But,  on  the  other  hand,  "  precieuses "  of 
every  sort  and  absurd  marquises,  ageing  prudes  and 
grey-haired  gallants,  bourgeois  people  who  would  be 
gentlemen  and  matrons  who  dabble  in  philosophy, 
sextons  or  great  lords  who  cover  "  their  fierce  resent- 
ment under  the  cloak  of  heaven's  interest,"  the  Don 
Juans  and  Tartufes,  the  Philamintes  and  Jourdains, 

71 


BRUNETliRE'S  ESSAYS 

the  Arnolphes  and  Arsinoes,  the  Acastes  and  Made- 
Ions,  the  Diafoiruses  and  Purgons  —  these  are  his 
victims.  They  are  all  those  who  disguise  nature, 
who,  to  distinguish  themselves  from  her,  begin  by 
leaving  her,  and  who,  flattering  themselves  on  being 
stronger  or  cleverer  than  she  is,  have  had  the  preten- 
sions to  govern  her  and  reduce  her  to  their  sway. 

On  the  other  hand  all  those  who  follow  nature, 
true  nature,  the  Martines  and  Nicoles,  his  Chry- 
sale  and  Madame  Jourdain,  Agnes,  Alceste,  and 
Henriette,  with  what  sympathy  have  they  not  always 
been  treated  ?  "  Such  are  his  people,  such  is  the  way 
to  act."  They  show  themselves  just  as  they  really 
are ;  and  by  nothing  but  showing  themselves  they 
bring  into  prominence  the  universal  and  somewhat 
mean  complacency  of  Philinte,  the  fierce  egoism  of 
Arnolphe,  the  stupidity  of  M.  Jourdain,  the  pretenti- 
ous simpering  of  Armande,  or  the  solemn  affectedness 
of  her  mother  Philaminte.  Is  the  lesson  not  clear 
enough  ?  On  the  side  of  those  who  follow  nature, 
on  the  side  of  the  former,  are  also  truth,  good  sense, 
honesty,  and  virtue  ;  on  the  other  side  are  absurdity, 
pretension,  stupidity,  hypocrisy — that  is  to  say,  on  the 
side  of  those  who  defy  nature,  who  treat  her  as  an 
enemy,  and  whose  doctrine  is  to  fight  and  triumph 
over  her. 

But  the  critics  are  unwilling  to  yield,  and  carp  and 

quibble  over  the  words  nature  and  natural.     Nature 

is  one  thing,  they  say,  and  the  natural  is  another,  and 

72 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

that  makes  two  ;  and,  if  they  have  not  gone  the  length 
of  saying  they  are  the  opposites  of  each  other,  I  rather 
fear  they  think  so.  Here  is  a  distinction  which 
Moliere  would  have  laughed  at  heartily  !  The  "  old 
fellow  "  of  the  Lettres  provinciales  has  few  more  amus- 
ing, and  so  I  shall  not  name  the  discoverer  thereof. 
Others  hold  that  this  kind  of  religion  or  philosophy 
of  nature  was  able  to  mislead  a  Rousseau,  but  not  a 
Moliere,  a  comic  author,  the  man  who  has  left  us 
"so  rich  a  gallery  of  vicious  and  absurd  creatures." 
They  have  not  considered  what  is  habitually  the  char- 
acter of  these  **  absurd  "  and  "  vicious  "  creatures  ;  and 
that  if  their  vice  or  absurdity  is  to  contradict  nature, 
that  is  exactly  what  we  have  just  been  saying.  But 
those  seem  to  come  nearer  the  point  who  remark  that 
the  word  nature,  which  is  vague,  changeable,  and 
badly  defined,  may  perhaps  have  several  meanings  ; 
that,  if  there  is  one  which  can  be  agreed  upon  to-day, 
it  must  differ  from  that  in  vogue  in  the  seventeenth 
century  ;  and  that,  before  knowing  how  far  it  differs, 
it  would  be  imprudent  to  inscribe  Moliere  in  the 
number  of  the  philosophers  of  nature.  We  must  then 
investigate  what  was  understood  at  that  time  by  the 
word  nature — if  it  was  only  a  mysterious  name  cover- 
ing a  great  mass  of  philosophical  indifference  and  love 
of  easy  pleasures,  or  on  the  contrary,  as  we  hold, 
containing  two  or  three  ideas,  very  precise,  very  bold, 
and  much  more  akin  than  we  might  suspect  to  those 
which  it  expresses  nowadays. 

73 


BRUNETlfeRE'S  ESSAYS 

If  I  am  forced  to  go  rather  far  back,  I  must  lay  the 
blame  on  the  historians  of  our  literature.  To  read 
them,  one  would  really  think  that  the  Molieres  and 
Racines  fell  from  the  clouds  one  day,  and  if,  in  speak- 
ing of  them,  they  do  sometimes  consider  the  milieu — 
for  the  milieu  is  the  history  of  the  love  of  Racine 
for  Mdlle.  du  Pare  or  the  relations  of  Moliere  with 
Madeleine  and  Armande  Bejart — they  have,  on  the 
other  hand,  a  strange  heedlessness  and  unconcern  of 
the  moment;  chronology  for  them  is  non-existent. 
No  doubt,  to  explain  the  comedy  of  Moliere,  they 
are  capable  of  going  back  to  that  of  Scarron,  and, 
if  necessary,  even  to  the  Menteur  or  to  the  Italians, 
but  they  are  usually  satisfied  with  that.  The  com- 
mentators go  much  further  back,  to  the  fabliaux  of 
the  Middle  Ages  or  the  Latin  comedy.  But  what 
neither  the  one  nor  the  other  seems  to  know  is  the 
sixteenth  century ;  they  reduce  it  to  three  or  four 
names,  and  are  apparently  ignorant  that  the  seven- 
teenth century  is  sprung  from  it  entirely.  This  was 
quite  clear  when,  at  my  suggestion  that  the  philosophy 
of  Moliere  was  what  we  now  call  a  "  philosophy 
of  nature,"  they  triumphantly  upbraided  me  with 
crediting  Moliere  with  ideas  younger  than  him  by 
some  hundred  years,  and  accused  me  of  confusing, 
with  utter  senselessness,  the  true  physiognomy  of  the 
seventeenth  century  by  mixing  up  with  it  certain 
features  of  the  eighteenth. 

Now  I  used   to   think  that  the  story  of  Rabelais 
74 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

belonged  to  the  sixteenth  century,  and  the  language 
seemed  significant  and  eloquent  enough. 

"  All  the  life  of  the  Thelemites  was  spent  not  in 
laws,  statutes,  or  rules,  but  according  to  their  own  free 
will  and  pleasure.  They  rose  out  of  their  beds  when 
they  thought  good  ;  they  did  eat,  drink,  labour,  sleep, 
when  they  had  a  mind  to  it  and  were  disposed  for  it. 
...  In  all  their  rule  and  strictest  tie  of  their  order 
there  was  but  this  one  clause  to  be  observed,  do 
WHAT  THOU  WILT ;  because  men  that  are  free,  well- 
born, well-bred,  and  conversant  in  honest  companies, 
Jiave  naturally  an  instinct  and  spur  that  prompteth  them 
unto  virtuous  actions^  and  withdraws  them  from  vice, 
which  is  called  honour.  Those  same  men,  when  by 
base  subjection  and  constraint  they  are  brought  under 
and  kept  down,  turn  aside  from  that  noble  disposition 
by  which  they  formerly  were  inclined  to  virtue^  to  shake 
ofF  and  break  that  bond  of  servitude  wherein  they  are 
so  tyrannously  enslaved  j  for  it  is  agreeable  with  the 
nature  of  man  to  long  after  things  forbidden  and  to 
desire  what  is  denied  us."     [Gargantua,  Ivii.)  * 

I  thought  I  found  there,  in  this  bold  vindication 
of  the  excellence  of  nature,  all  the  philosophy  of  the 
Jbcole  des  Femmes.  And  I  also  thought  that  I  found 
that  of  Tartufe  in  the  famous  allegory  which  we  all 
know  : — 

"  Physis — that  is  to  say.  Nature — at  her  first  burthen 
begat  Beauty  and  Harmony.  .  .  .     Antiphysis,  who 

*  Urquhart's  translation. 

75 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

ever  was  the  counterpart  of  Nature,  immediately,  out 
of  a  malicious  spite  against  her  for  her  beautiful  and 
honourable  productions,  in  opposition  begat  Amodunt 
and  Dissonance.  .  .  .  Yet — as  you  know  that  apes 
esteem  their  young  the  handsomest  thing  in  the  world 
— Antiphysis  extolled  her  offspring,  and  strove  to 
prove  that  their  shape  was  handsomer  and  neater  than 
that  of  the  children  of  Physis.  .  .  .  Since  that,  she 
begot  the  hypocritical  tribes  of  eavesdropping  dis- 
semblers, superstitious  pope-mongers,  and  priest-ridden 
bigots,  the  frantic  Pistolets,  the  demoniacal  Calvins, 
impostors  of  Geneva,  the  scrapers  of  benefices, 
apparitors  with  the  devil  in  them,  and  other  grinders 
and  squeezers  of  livings,  herb-stinking  hermits,  gulli- 
gutted  dunces  of  the  cowl,  church  vermin,  false  zealots, 
devourers  of  the  substance  of  men,  and  many  more 
other  deformed  and  ill-favoured  monsters,  made  in 
spite  of  nature."     [Pantagruel^  iv.  32.)  * 

This  is  the  purest  substance  of  pantagruelism ;  and 
if  perchance  the  remark  were  to  be  made  that  the 
allegory  is  not  Rabelais's  own,  then  its  signification 
would  only  be  clearer,  for  in  this  case,  instead  of 
being  a  mere  freak,  it  would  be  nothing  less  than 
the  figure  or  symbol  of  the  very  philosophy  of  the 
Renaissance. 

This  may  be  shown  in  a  few  words,  the  justness  of 
which  could  be  verified  as  well  in  the  history  of 
European    philosophy   as   in    that   of   Italian    art    or 

*  Motteux's  translation. 
76 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

French  literature.  The  Renaissance  was  in  every 
respect  only  a  reaction,  or  rather  an  ardent  and  pas- 
sionate revolt  of  the  flesh  against  the  spirit,  of  nature 
against  discipline ;  and,  generally,  what  it  set  itself  to 
do  by  the  means  of  this  return  to  paganism,  was  to 
emancipate  nature  and  the  flesh  from  their  old  servi- 
tude, in  the  hopes  of  deifying  them.  If  there  is 
one  meaning  in  the  droll  epic  of  Rabelais,  one  that 
is  neither  hidden  nor  secret  but  its  soul,  I  make  bold 
to  say  that  it  is  none  other  than  this.  To  use  the 
master's  own  words,  this  is  its  "horrid  mystery,"  its 
"  absconse  doctrine,"  its  "substantific  marrow."  Let 
us  conform  to  nature.  Do  not  ask  her  works  or  actions 
to  be  other  than  her  own.  And  above  all,  never  let 
us  doubt  that  we  fulfil  all  our  duty  by  following  her, 
since  we  thus  fulfil  all  her  aim.  For  long,  and  too 
long,  under  the  pretext  of  "  imitating  the  creator  of 
the  universe,"  have  men,  obeying  "some  derangement 
or  other  of  good  judgment  and  common  sense  "  walked 
"with  their  feet  in  the  air  and  their  head  on  the 
ground,"  and  lived  a  life  opposed  to  nature  and  truth. 
Now  the  time  is  come  for  them  to  understand  that  if 
they  form  part  of  nature,  it  is  not  for  the  purpose  of 
distinguishing  themselves  from  her,  that  where  there  is 
pleasure  there  is  no  sin,  and  that  Physis,  the  teacher  or 
mother  of  all  beauty  and  all  harmony,  is  consequently 
the  teacher  and  mother  of  all  honour  and  virtue.  This 
is  the  teaching  of  Rabelais  ;  this  is  the  "  holy  gospel " 
he  came  to  preach,  "  although  people  scoffed  "  ;   and 

11 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

this  is  why  his  work,  in  which  filth  rudely  blends  to 
the  pollution  of  almost  everything  which  he  touches, 
is  the  completest  expression  we  have — from  the  very 
reason  that  it  is  the  most  confused — of  the  spirit  of  the 
Renaissance.  We  must  not  forget  that  the  obscene 
works  of  Jules  Remain  issued  from  the  school  of 
Raphael  himself. 

The  Protestants  made  no  mistake  about  it,  neither 
Luther,  nor  especially  Calvin  ;  and  in  this  respect  no 
greater  error  could  be  committed  than  to  endeavour 
to  reconcile,  or  rather  join  them,  in  a  kind  of  sym- 
pathetic indifference,  with  those  who  were  their  worst 
enemies.  As  if  to  this  very  day  the  hatred  of  the 
Renaissance  was  not  plainly  written  on  the  bare 
and  melancholy  walls  of  the  Protestant  church  !  If 
Luther  had  not  seen  with  his  eyes  the  much  vaunted 
splendour  of  the  age  of  Leo  X,  which  he  called 
the  epoch  of  Roman  infamy,  and  Paganism  seated 
on  the  pontifical  throne,  perhaps  the  Reformation, 
which  had  begun  with  a  "  quarrel  of  monks,"  would 
have  ended  obscurely  in  the  in  pace  of  a  German  or 
Italian  convent.  And  who  does  not  know,  too,  that 
what  Calvin  endeavoured  to  found  at  Geneva  was  a 
republic  of  the  just,  where  civil  and  political  law,  the 
expression  of  Christian  morality,  was  founded,  like  that 
morality,  on  the  dogma  of  original  sin  and  predestina- 
tion ?  But  what  happened  neither  the  one  nor  the 
other  had  foreseen  :  I  mean  to  say  that,  by  arming 
one  half  of  Christianity  against  the  other,  they  threw 

78 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

suspicion  on  the  use  of  liberty,  morality,  and  religion 
for  temporal  ends,  they  compromised  the  cause  they 
had  defended  in  deplorable  and  bloody  quarrels,  and, 
thanks  to  their  disputes  with  Catholicism,  it  was  not 
morality  that  righted  itself,  but  it  was  indifference, 
scepticism,  and  epicureanism  that  gained. 

At  the  end  of  the  century,  indeed,  the  language 
of  Montaigne  is  identical  with  that  of  Rabelais : — 

"I  have  taken,"  he  said,  "for  my  regard  this 
ancient  precept,  very  rawly  and  simply,  that  "We 
cannot  err  in  following  Nature " :  and  that  the 
sovereign  document  is,  for  a  man  to  conform  him- 
self to  her.  /  have  not,  as  Socrates,  by  the  power 
and  virtue  of  reason^  corrected  my  natural  complexions, 
nor  by  art  hindered  mine  inclination.  Look  how  I 
came  into  the  world,  so  I  go  on  ;  I  strive  with 
nothing.  .  .  .  Shall  I  say  thus  much  by  the  way  ? 
That  I  see  a  certain  image  of  bookish  or  scholastical 
'  prudhomie^  only  which  is  in  a  manner  in  use  amongst 
us,  held  and  reputed  in  greater  esteem  than  it  deserveth, 
and  which  is  but  a  servant  unto  precepts,  brought  under 
by  hope  and  constrained  by  fear?  I  love  it  such  as 
laws  and  religions  make  not,  but  over -make  and 
authorise  ;  that  they  may  be  perceived  to  have  where- 
with to  uphold  herself  without  other  aid:  sprung  up 
in  us  of  her  own  proper  roots,  by  and  from  the  seed 
of  universal  reason,  imprinted  in  every  man  that  is 
not  unnatural."     {Essays,  iii.  12.)* 

*  Florio's  translation. 

79 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

In  a  short  time  these  will  be  the  words  of  the 
Cleantes,  Philintes,  and  Aristes  of  our  Moliere. 
Moreover,  we  may  now  note  that  they  will  not 
go  so  far  as  Montaigne,  and  that  none  of  them 
will  dare  to  say  as  boldly  as  the  author  of  the 
Essays : — 

"  Nature  hath  like  a  kind  mother  observed  this, 
that  such  actions  as  she  for  our  necessities  hath 
enjoined  unto  us,  should  also  be  voluptuous  unto 
us.  And  doth  not  only  by  reason  but  also  by 
appetite  invite  us  unto  them  :  it  were  injustice  to 
corrupt  her  rules.  When  I  behold  Caesar  and 
Alexander  in  the  thickest  of  their  wondrous  great 
labours,  so  absolutely  to  enjoy  human  and  corporal 
pleasures,  /  say  not^  that  they  release  thereby  their 
mind^  hut  rather  strengthen  the  same;  submitting  by 
vigour  of  courage  their  violent  occupation  and 
laborious  thoughts  to  the  customary  use  of  ordinary 
life."     (EssaySy  ill.  13.)* 

It  is  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  before  this  cynical 
language  is  spoken  again, — not  before  Helvetius, 
Diderot,  and  the  Baron  d'Holbach. 

For  the  seventeenth  century  clearly  saw  the  danger; 
and  indeed  all  the  characteristics  of  its  earliest  years  can- 
not be  understood  or  reduced  to  unity  but  by  this — by 
the  concern  which  it  felt  at  the  spread  of  these  doctrines, 
by  the  horror  of  the  consequences  which  it  saw  were  sure 
to  follow,  and  by  the  effort  which  it  made  to  stop  them. 

*  Florio's  translation. 
80 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

What  did  the  early  Precieuses  —  these  Precieuses 
whom  Moliere  was  to  mock  so  cruelly,  and  whose  very 
virtues  he  was  to  ridicule — an  Arthenice  and  Sapho,  a 
Cathos  and  Madelon,  what  did  they  do,  in  purifying 
the  language,  but  try  to  make  it  again  respect  itself 
and  its  readers  ?  Against  this  dissoluteness  of  manners 
which  is  to  be  seen  everywhere,  in  the  Moyen  de  Par- 
venir  or  the  Parnasse  satyrlque — and  of  which  we  must 
frankly  admit  that  Henry  IV  himself  from  his  throne 
set  an  example  as  scandalous,  though  in  a  very  different 
way,  as  Louis  XIV, — the  cultured  folk  of  the  Hotel 
de  Rambouillet  endeavoured  to  raise  their  opposition. 
Men  like  Francois  de  Sales  and  Berulle  come  to  their 
aid  from  every  quarter.  Against  libertines  of  the 
type  of  Theophile  or  Des  Barreaux  there  is  formed 
a  coalition  of  all  those  who  do  not  believe  that  virtue 
can,  as  Montaigne  said,  "  uphold  herself  without  other 
aid,"  or,  as  Rabelais  said,  that  "  men  that  are  free  .  . 
are  naturally  goaded  to  virtuous  actions."  Priests  of  the 
Oratory  and  Nuns  of  the  Visitation,  Carmelites,  Friars 
of  Saint  John,  Franciscan  Sisters,  it  was  then,  between 
1 6 10  and  1625,  that  all  these  orders  are  founded  or 
established  in  France.  It  was  then  also  that  Mother 
Angelique  reforms  Port-Royal,  that  Saint-Cyran  and 
Jansen  begin  to  spread  and  preach  the  doctrines  of 
Saint  Augustine,  that  the  very  ethics  of  the  Jesuits, 
still  too  worldly,  too  accommodating,  or  too  political, 
are  forced  to  return  to  the  source  of  Christianity  and 
become,  if  I  may  say  so,  more  rigid  and   extreme. 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

The  battle  is  now  fought  all  along  the  line,  and,  from  this 
time  onwards,  the  history  of  ideas  in  the  seventeenth 
century  is  no  more  than  the  history  of  the  long  com- 
bat of  Jansenism  against  Cartesian  rationalism  on  the 
one  hand,  and  against  "libertinism"  on  the  other — 
for  this  is  what  the  philosophy  of  nature  was  then 
called. 

But  what  is  this  philosophy  of  nature  ?  And  can 
it  be  really  called  a  philosophy  ?  And  who  are  the 
"  libertines  "  ?  And  when  Mersenne,  for  example,  in 
an  oft-cited  fragment,  gives  the  number  of  atheists  at 
not  less  than  fifty  thousand  for  Paris  alone,  is  he  not 
to  be  suspected  of  a  little  imagination,  to  begin  with, 
— for  how  did  he  count  them  ? — and  of  a  good  deal 
of  exaggeration  ?  Is  a  man  an  "  atheist "  for  gambling 
or  running  after  women,  or  for  not  keeping  Lent,  or 
for  burning  "a  piece  of  the  true  Cross"?  Who 
knows  the  secrets  of  conscience  ?  And,  even  in  the 
soul  of  a  Theophile  or  a  Des  Barreaux,  who  knows, 
or  ever  can  know,  the  latent  faith  which  still  mingles 
with  the  outer  blusterings  of  impiety  ? 

Nobody,  assuredly.  But,  instead  of  the  secrets  of 
their  hearts,  we  know  at  least  the  principles  which 
they  openly  confess,  and  here  are  some  of  them. 
"  Men  of  wit,"  they  say,  "  believe  in  God  only  from 
convenience,  and  as  a  maxim  of  State."  They  say 
also  that  "  all  things  are  led  and  governed  by  Destiny, 
which  is  irrevocable,  infallible,  necessary,  and  inevit- 
able for  all  men,  no  matter  what  they  do."     And  they 

82 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

say  too  that  *'  there  is  no  other  divinity  or  sovereign 
power  in  the  world  than  nature,  which  must  be  satisfied 
in  everything,  without  refusing  to  our  body  or  our 
minds  what  they  desire  of  us  in  the  exercise  of  their 
power  or  natural  faculties." 

No  matter  what  name  they  be  known  by,  if  our 
"  libertines "  of  the  seventeenth  century  rally  round 
these  principles,  their  doctrines,  we  may  say,  were 
already  those  of  our  modern  determinists,  naturalists, 
or  materalists.  They  aimed  at  something  more  than 
gaining  the  liberty  of  a  life  of  pleasure.  And  though 
our  ideas  on  God,  Destiny,  or  Nature  are  now 
more  precise,  and  are  enriched  by  all  the  scientific 
discoveries  of  almost  three  hundred  years,  they  are  no 
more  deeply  or  securely  fixed  in  our  minds.  The 
formulae  alone  have  varied — and  that  is  something — 
but  not  the  substance  or  the  essentials. 


II 

Moliere's  Early  Work 

To  have  escaped  from  the  influence  of  the  ideas  of  his 
time  and  to  have  adhered  neither  to  one  party  nor  the 
other,  in  a  century  which  was  much  more  contentious 
than  ours  and  had  more  readily  the  courage  of  its 
opinions,  Moliere  would  have  to  have  been   born  in 

83 


BRUNETlfeRE'S  ESSAYS 

different  circumstances,  to  have  received  from  his 
family  and  surroundings  a  different  education,  and  to 
have  served  a  different  apprenticeship  in  the  vi^ork  of 
real  life.  But  he  w^s  a  bourgeois  of  Paris,  like 
Boileau  and  Voltaire — and  a  bourgeois  in  a  small 
w^ay,  the  son  of  Jean  Poquelin,  upholsterer — and  if 
ever  Moliere  heard  the  names  of  a  Saint-Cyran  or 
an  Arnauld  mentioned  in  his  father's  house,  we  may 
doubt  if  it  was  with  the  accent  of  respect,  or  even 
of  sympathy. 

They  asked  of  mortal  men  too  great  perfection. 

I  mean  to  say  that  they  preached  virtues  which 
the  Parisian  bourgeois,  the  friend  of  easy  pleasures, 
did  not  relish  any  more  then  than  now.  And,  though 
bourgeois  themselves,  they  were  still  too  much  of 
gentlemen  for  all  these  little  upholsterers,  linen- 
drapers,  feather-dressers,  or  men  of  odd  jobs  :  Jansenism 
in  the  seventeenth  century  was  always  somewhat 
aristocratic.  I  may  be  allowed  to  refer  the  reader,  on 
the  question  of  Moliere's  early  education — his  secular, 
as  well  as  his  home  education — and  his  indebtedness 
to  Gassendi,  to  the  recent  works,  so  conscientious  and 
learned,  of  M.  Louis  Moland,  M.  Gustave  Larroumet, 
and  M.  Paul  Mesnard. 

In  truth,  whatever  tradition  may  say,  it  cannot  be 
proved  that  Moliere  ever  heard  Gassendi  or  knew 
him  well.  But  it  may  suffice  that  on  leaving  the 
College  de  Clermont  the  young  Poquelin,  we  know 

84 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

not  why,  formed  a  friendship  with  the  young  Chapelle, 
and  that  he  was  thus  enabled  to  visit  the  house  of 
Lhuillier,  the  natural  father  of  Chapelle,  much  more 
ribald  still  and  dissolute  than  his  drunken  son.  "  I 
saw  somewhere  a  print  of  Rabelais,"  says  Tallemant 
des  Reaux,  "  which  was  as  like  Lhuillier  as  two  peas, 
for  he  had  the  mean  and  scoffing  face  of  Lhuillier." 
A  mere  likeness  to  Rabelais  does  not  necessarily  imply 
anything.  Unfortunately  some  other  details  which 
Tallemant  adds  give — or  would  give,  if  only  we 
could  transcribe  them — a  much  worse  idea  of  his 
character.  And  if  we  were  to  dare  yet  to  add  what 
his  friend  Nicolas  Bouchard  has  said  of  him,  in  his 
Confessions  d^un  Bourgeois  de  Paris^  we  would  then  be 
able  to  judge  in  what  school,  in  his  twentieth  year, 
Moliere  learned  the  life  of  the  young  man.  "  These 
confessions  of  a  very  wretched  man,"  said  Paulin  Paris 
in  his  excellent  edition  of  the  Historiettes^  "  show  up 
in  a  very  unfavourable  light  the  little  meetings  of 
Lhuillier,  Du  Puys,  Gassendi,  and  other  famous  people. 
Excepting  the  passion  and  the  frenzy,  so  to  speak,  of 
proselytism,  these  men  were  not  so  much  behind  the 
philosophical  ideas  of  the  following  century."  It  is 
not  we  who  make  him  say  so,  and  it  is  almost  forty 
years  since  those  lines  were  w^ritten  !  If  Moliere 
learned  any  lessons  in  philosophy  in  the  company  of 
these  debauchees  and  libertines,  they  must  have  been 
singularly  like  those  which  the  "  petit  Arouet "  was 
to   receive  in   his  turn   from  old  Ninon  de  Lenclos 

85 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

and  the  frequenters  of  the  society  of  the  Temple.  Is 
it  astonishing  that  they  bore  the  same  fruits  ?  Or, 
if  this  is  overstating  the  case,  what  more  natural  than 
that  the  examples  of  indifference  or  unconcern  which 
Moliere  had  seen  while  still  a  child  in  the  house  of  the 
upholsterer  Poquelin  may  have  prepared  him  to  profit 
from  the  lessons  of  "libertinism"  which  he  received 
in  the  house  of  councillor  Lhuillier  ? 

The  lessons  which  he  gave  himself  could  not,  of 
course,  but  confirm  the  former.  Our  comedians 
nowadays  are  the  "  notaries  of  art,"  as  has  been  so  well 
said  ;  and,  no  matter  how  little  taste  they  may  show, 
nothing  prevents  them  joining  to  the  exercise  of 
their  profession  all  the  bourgeois  virtues,  and  being 
good  sons,  good  husbands,  good  fathers,  and  all  the 
rest.  It  was  otherwise  at  the  time  of  Moliere.  The 
comedian  lived  on  the  margin  of  society,  and  claimed 
the  benefits  of  an  irregularity  whose  annoyances  and 
humiliations  he  felt  daily  :  and  if  his  ways  were  not 
altogether  those  of  a  rebel,  they  were  at  least  those  of 
an  independent  man,  who  hardly  reckoned  with  the 
prejudices  of  "  the  wife  of  the  bailie  or  the  wife  of  the 
assessor." 

The  life  of  a  bohemian,  the  adventurous  existence 
of  the  travelling  comedian,  for  so  he  was  called,  meet- 
ing with  adventures  all  along  his  lengthy  route,  play- 
ing kings  in  a  barn,  at  Pezenas  or  P'ontenay-le-Comte, 
travelling  in  a  waggon,  when   not  on   foot,   in    the 

costume   of  his   character,   now   dressed  as  a  tyrant 

86 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

and  now  as  a  nurse,  let  us  remember  that  it  was  this 
life  which  Moliere  led  for  more  than  twelve  years. 
Let  us  call  to  mind  the  Roman  comique.  Picture 
the  arrival  in  a  town,  at  Narbonne  or  Toulouse, 
on  a  hot  summer  afternoon,  the  youngsters  running 
to  sec  the  "  showmen  "  pass,  the  curious  and  distrust- 
ful glance  of  the  artisan  at  the  door  of  his  shop  or  of 
the  housewife  at  her  window  ;  and  in  the  evening,  the 
nights  at  the  inn,  the  mixed  collection  of  people,  the 
loud  mirth  of  the  company  at  their  table  feasting  on 
a  big  day's  drawing  ;  or  even  on  the  following  day, 
if  they  have  been  pelted  with  potatoes,  as  some- 
times happened,  their  flight  at  early  morning,  with 
violent  rage  in  their  hearts,  showing  itself  in  re- 
ciprocal recriminations ;  and  often,  too,  the  uncer- 
tainty as  to  where  they  were  to  sleep  and  on  what 
to  make  their  supper.  Thus  passed  the  youth  of 
Moliere ;  too  fortunate  when  the  disdain  of  these 
country  folk,  whom  he  amused  for  half-a-crown,  did 
not  go  the  length  of  outrage, — and  worthy  of  respect, 
it  must  be  said,  for  not  having  borne  them  any  further 
grudge,  if  certain  inoffensive  witticisms  on  Limoges 
in  his  Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac  and  the  caricatures  of 
the  Comtesse  cf  Escarbagnas  are,  as  they  seem  to  be,  his 
almost  unique  vengeance. 

But  if  he  believed  in  few  things,  and  if,  on  leaving 
Paris,  he  carried  away  with  him  few  illusions,  he 
would  surely  not  have  brought  them  back  with  him 
from   his  wanderings   through    the  country  !     If,   in 

87 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

his  twentieth  year,  he  had  yielded  unawares  to  the 
simple  attractions  of  pleasure,  he  had  the  time,  during 
these  twelve  years,  to  see,  to  compare,  and  to  reflect. 
And  the  comedian  who  returned  to  Paris,  in  1658, 
never  to  leave  it  again,  was  not  then  an  ordinary 
"  libertine  "  or  a  vulgar  "  epicurean."  He  had  his  ideas, 
he  had  his  philosophy,  he  had  his  plans  in  reserve  ;  and 
all  those  whom  he,  like  Rabelais  before  him,  would 
have  readily  treated  as  "eavesdropping  dissemblers, 
church  vermin,  and  false  zealots,"  were  not  slow  to 
recognise  it. 

I  shall  pass  rapidly  over  his  first  pieces  :  UEtourdi, 
Le  Dipit  amoureuXy  Les  Precieuses  ridicules^  Sganarelle^ 
UEcole  des  Maris.  Not  that,  if  we  look  at  them 
closely,  we  can  fail  to  see  the  thought  of  Moliere  and 
the  liberty  of  his  banter  already  giving  promise  of 
greater  boldness.  If  the  Dipit  amour eux  and  the  Etourdi 
are  only  canvases  in  the  Italian  manner,  on  which 
Moliere  is  content  to  trick  out  the  arabesques  of  his 
fancy — more  brilliant,  more  lively,  more  witty  too 
perhaps,  at  that  time  while  youth  had  not  yet  left  him, 
than  in  the  ceremony  of  the  Bourgeois  Gentilhomme 
or  the  Malade  imaginaire — the  Prkieuses  ridicules  and 
the  £cole  des  Maris  are  already  a  spirited  and  a  well- 
ordered  attack  on  all  those  who  designed,  as  we 
have  said,  to  disguise  or  deck  out  nature.  Their 
very  succession  seems  to  me  instructive.  Instead  of 
asking  M.  de  Mascarille  simply  to  sit  down,  perhaps 

you  say  to  him,  with  the  Misses  Gorgibus,  "  Satisfy  the 

88 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

desire  which  this  chair  has  to  embrace  you  "  ?     Then 

you  are  quite  ridiculous,  as  you  are  not  at  all  natural. 

You  are,  however,  only  ridiculous.     But,  instead  of 

overstraining  nature  and  making  her,  if  possible,  as 

ridiculous    as   we   are,    perhaps   we   aim   at    forcing, 

cramping,  and  regulating  her  ?      Let  us  be  on  our 

guard.      We  meet  the  fate  of  the  Sganarelle  of  the 

Ecole   des  Marts   and    his   Isabelle,   and    we   are   not 

only    ridiculous,    but    begin    to    be    dull,    harsh,    and 

offensive.     First   proof  or   first  sketch    of  Arnolphe, 

this  Sganarelle  differs  from  him  only  in  being  treated 

less  seriously,  in  the  style  of  Scarron,  if  I  may  say  so, 

rather  than  in  the  great  style  of  Moliere.     Now  let 

us   come   to   Arnolphe,    and   speak   of  the  Ecole  des 

Femmes.     It  is  the  first  in  date  of  the  great  comedies 

of  Moliere,  that  which  first  placed  him  in  the  position 

he  still  continues  to  occupy  alone,  and,   because   its 

intrigue  is  more  amusing,  its  language  more  frank, 

and  its  philosophy  more  optimistic,  I  know  several 

of  his   devotees  who  will  even  now   have   it   to  be 

his  masterpiece. 

Recently  we  have  heard  the  amusing  proposal  that 

we  should  talk  of  the  Ecole  des  Femmes  as  if  Moliere 

had  entitled  it  the  Suite  de  VEcole  des  Maris.     It  is 

equally  probable  that  if  the  Misanthrope  was  entitled 

the  Mariage  fait  et  dlfait  we  would  not  sec  in  it  what 

we  do  see,  and  what  we  have  at  least  the  right  to  wish 

to  see,  no  more  than  in  Tartufe — which  should  rather 

have  been  called  the  hnposteur — if  Moliere  had  entitled 

89 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

it,  for  example,  Une  Famille  an  temps  de  Louis  XIV. 
This  is  a  curious  way  of  reasoning.  To  justify  Bos- 
suet  from  the  reproaches  made  against  his  Discours 
sur  rHistoire  universelle^  may  we  not  also  propose  to 
speak  of  it  as  if  he  had  entitled  it  Observations  sommaires 
sur  rHistoire  de  quelques  Peuples  anciens !  But  titles 
which  have  no  value  when  the  authors  have  not  cared 
to  give  them,  as  for  example  Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac, 
have  a  value  when,  like  the  Ecole  des  Femmes^  they 
signify  something  of  themselves  ;  and — I  am  no  doubt 
very  naive  to  say  so,  but  it  is  worth  saying — since 
there  are  some  who  hold  an  opposite  opinion. 

What  then  is  the  "  school  for  wives  "  according  to 
Moliere,  and  what  is  the  lesson  to  be  derived  from 
his  comedy  ?  There  is  nothing  more  evident.  The 
"  school  for  wives "  is  love,  or  rather  it  is  nature  ; 
and  the  lesson,  which  is  plain  enough,  is  that  nature 
alone  will  be  always  stronger  than  all  we  can  do  to 
thwart  its  wish.  Brought  up  "  in  a  small  convent,  far 
from  all  experience,"  Agnes  has  nothing  for  her  but  to 
be  youth,  love,  and  nature. — It  even  seems  that  there 
is  a  certain  element  of  unfeelingness  in  her,  not  to 
say  of  simple  perverseness,  which  I  should  mistrust 
if  only  I  was  Horace  1 — More  natural  and  less  learned, 
less  lively,  too,  than  the  Isabella  of  the  Ecole  des  Maris^ 
she  has  not  and  never  will  have  the  playful  grace  of  the 
Henriette  of  the  Femmes  savantes.  As  for  Arnolphe, 
Moliere   himself  has  been  careful  to   inform    us,   in 

speaking  of  him,  "  that  it  is  not  incompatible  for  a 

90 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

person  to  be  ridiculous  in  certain  things  and  an  honest 
man  in  others."  He  is  not,  moreover,  an  old  man,  as 
he  seems  generally  to  be  imagined,  and  many  people 
believe  themselves  young  at  his  age.  What  he  has 
against  him  is,  then,  merely  his  wish  to  force  nature,  and 
he  is  foolish,  ridiculous,  and  contemptible  only  in  this 
point.  I  say  nothing  of  Horace  :  among  the  lovers  of 
Moliere's  repertoire,  there  is  none  more  insignificant, 
whose  merit  more  strictly  reduces  itself  to  that  of  his 
"flaxen  peruke,"  who  is,  moreover,  more  worthy  of 
Agnes.  He  is  young  like  her,  as  he  is  simple,  and  like 
her  he  is  nature  itself.  What  could  be  clearer  ?  And 
without  passing  the  limits  of  his  art,  without  preach- 
ing on  the  stage,  how  could  Moliere  have  told  us  that 
we  do  not  change  nature  in  her  essence ;  that  who- 
ever tries  to  pays  for  it  dearly  ;  and  that  conse- 
quently the  beginning  of  all  our  evils  is  the  desire  to 
make  the  attempt. 

For,  as  to  those  who  refuse  this  interpretation  of  the 
Eco/e  des  Femmes,  I  should  be  curious  to  know  how 
they  explain  the  effect  it  produced  and  the  outburst 
of  resentment  which  followed.  Would  the  very  in- 
decent double  meaning  of  the  ribbon  scene  and  the 
joking  about  "  hell's  caldrons "  have  been  sufficient  ? 
Yes,  if  you  will,  and  on  the  condition  that  they  signify 
something  else  and  more  than  they  really  do.  But,  in 
reality,  what  contemporaries  thought  was  that  comedy, 
which  had,  till  then,  with  the  Corneilles,  Scarron, 
and  Quinault,  confined  itself  to  providing  amusement 

91 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

by  devices  in  turn  ludicrous  and  romantic,  had  now, 
with  Moliere,  puffed  itself  up,  if  I  may  say  so,  with 
quite  another  ambition,  and  had,  for  the  first  time,  in 
the  Ecole  des  Femmes^  touched  indirectly  on  the  great 
question  which  then  divided  men's  minds.  They  re- 
cognised in  the  Ecole  des  Femmes  an  aim  which  went 
further.  It  seemed  to  them  in  short  that  this  poet 
was  overstepping  his  limits,  that  he  was  extending  the 
sphere  of  his  art  even  to  those  objects  to  which  it 
should  remain  a  stranger,  and  that  he  was  haughtily 
leaving  behind  his  role  of  "public  entertainer."  They 
endeavoured  to  silence  him.  Moliere  replied  to  them 
one  after  the  other  with  the  Critique  de  V Ecole  des 
Femmes^  the  Impromptu  de  Versailles^  and  Tartufe. 


Ill 

The  Question  of  Tartufe 

As  he  had  written  the  Critique  de  V Ecole  des  Femmes 

in  answer  to  the  pedants  and  prudes  and  people  like 

his  Lysidas   and  Climene  who  "censured   his   finest 

work,"  as  he  had  written  the  Impromptu  de  Versailles 

to  avenge  himself  on  the  comedians  of  the  Hotel  de 

Bourgogne,  who  did  not  scruple  to  attack  even  his 

private  life,  so  Moliere  seems  at  first  to  have  thought 

92 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

of  Tartufe  only  to  reply  to  those,  and  at  the  same 
time  to  carry  fire  and  sword  into  their  camp,  who 
accused  him  of  indecency  and,  above  all,  of  impiety 
in  his  Ecole  des  Femmes. 

This  is  what  chronology  proves.  But  since  Tartufe 
took  possession  of  the  stage  only  in  1669,  and  since, 
even  now,  it  is  separated,  in  many  editions  of  Moliere, 
from  the  ^cole  des  Femmes — by  Don  yuan^  which  is  of 
the  year  1665,  by  the  Misanthrope^  which  is  of  1666, 
by  the  Medecin  malgre  lui  and  Melicertey — the  con- 
tinuity of  inspiration  which  connects  the  two  master- 
pieces of  the  work  of  Moliere  escapes  our  view  at 
first,  and  we  do  not  see,  or  we  forget,  that,  in  the 
history  of  the  public  life  of  Moliere,  Tartufe  is  first 
and  foremost  a  reply  and  an  attack.  To  make  no 
mistake  about  it,  it  is  sufficient  to  remember  that, 
before  appearing  for  the  first  time  in  the  month  of 
May  1664,  Tartufe  was  separated  from  the  Ecole  des 
Femmes^  which  was  represented  for  the  first  time  in 
the  winter  of  1662,  really  by  an  interval  of  only 
fifteen  or  sixteen  months — the  time  necessary  to 
write  it ! — and  by  two  or  three  pieces,  which  are 
precisely  the  Critique  de  VEcole  des  Femmes^  the  Im- 
promptu de  Versailles^  and  the  Mariage  force.  If  the 
first  two  are  sufficiently  well  known,  we  must  say 
of  the  third  that  Moliere  doubtless  saw  in  it — as 
it  was  expressly  written  for  the  king,  and  in  haste — 
a  means  of  paying  his  court  and  of  ranging  on  his 
side  the  all-powerful  master  on  whom  his  adversaries 

93 


BRUNETli:RE'S  ESSAYS 

depended  as  well  as  he.  A  clever  courtier  indeed 
was  Moliere  ;  this  is  a  point  we  must  remember  ; 
and  poor  Corneille  himself  has  no  humbler  dedica- 
tion than  that  of  the  Ecole  des  Maris  to  the  king's 
brother  :  "  There  is  nothing  so  superb  as  the  name 
I  put  at  the  head  of  this  book,  and  nothing  meaner 
than  that  which  it  contains." 

This  preliminary  remark  may  already  throw  some 
light  on  the  true  meaning  of  Tartufe  and  Moliere's 
intentions.  It  shows  at  least  that  Tartufe — very 
different  in  this  respect  from  Amphitryon^  for  example, 
— is  an  act  as  much  as  a  work  :  a  work  of  combat, 
as  we  would  now  say,  and  an  act  of  declared  hostility. 
But  against  whom  ?  This  is  the  point.  For  it  is  no 
use  repeating  that  Moliere  himself  declared  that  it 
was  only  against  "  false  coiners  of  devotion  "  :  I  shall 
first  reply  that,  being  himself  a  party  in  the  case, 
his  evidence  cannot  be  received  ;  and,  should  it  be  re- 
ceived, I  would  add  that  there  would  still  be  excellent 
reasons,  if  not  for  disbelieving  it,  yet  for  acting  as 
if  we  did  disbelieve  it.  I  may  be  permitted  to 
give  only  one, — that,  without  running  the  almost 
inevitable  risk  of  losing  the  good  graces  of  the 
king,  of  seeing  his  company  broken  up  and  his 
theatre  closed,  of  compromising,  in  short,  his  peace 
and  his  liberty,  Moliere  could  not  have  spoken 
otherwise.  Do  you  see  him  glorying  in  having 
openly  attacked  religion  ?  Voltaire  even,  in  the 
following  century,  could  hardly  dare  to  do  this  :  and 

94 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

I  know  some  people  even  in  our  days  who  attack  it, 
and  do  not  wish  it  to  be  known.  And  yet  they  have 
no  Bastille  to  fear !  So  we  need  not  pay  much 
attention  to  such  statements  :  for  if  Moliere,  when 
he  professed  his  esteem  and  his  respect  for  the  truly 
pious,  said  one  thing  "while  he  thought  another," 
and  if  "  that  is  called  lying  " — let  us  have  no  fear  of 
the  word — he  lied.  Perhaps,  too,  he  did  not  tell  the 
truth  when,  in  the  preface  to  his  Precieuses^  he  said 
he  had  attacked  only  the  false  Precieuses,  when,  like- 
wise, in  the  Critique  de  VEcole  des  Femmes^  he  imputed 
the  double  meaning  of  the  ribbon  scene  to  the  defiling 
imagination  of  those  who  had  pretended  to  be  shocked 
by  it  ?  No  more  let  us  pay  any  attention  to  the 
arguments  which  are  drawn  from  a  certain  theory 
of  Moliere's  intentions  ;  let  us  remember  rather  that 
what  is  to  be  cleared  up  is  precisely  the  nature  of 
these  intentions ;  and,  taking  Tartufe  in  its  place  in 
history,  let  us  see  where,  between  1650  and  1664, 
were  these  hypocrites  and  false  religionists,  what 
were  the  great  dangers  with  which  they  threatened 
society,  and  what  were  their  names  ? 

One  always  reasons  as  if  there  was  only  one 
seventeenth  century,  identical  with  itself  in  all  the 
duration  of  the  hundred  years  of  its  course,  and  as  if 
Tartufe  was  contemporary  with  the  reign  of  Madame 
de  Maintenon,  and  not  with  the  time  when  the  La 
Vallieres  and  Montespans  were  in  favour  !  But  in  this 
court  where  Louis  XIV,  barely  emancipated  from  the 

95 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

tutelage  of  his  mother,  turned  his  caprice  from  sultana 
to  sultana,  and  let  his  covetousness  wander  even  to  his 
brother's  wife ;  where  around  him  every  man  and 
woman,  young  and  ardent  like  him,  on  his  example 
thought  only  of  gallantry,  love,  and  sensuality  ;  where 
the  severe  Colbert  even  made  himself  the  minister  as 
much  of  the  pleasures  as  of  the  business  of  his  master, 
there  were  not,  there  could  not  be,  any  hypocrites 
or  false  religionists,  from  the  simple  reason  that 
devotion  there  led  nobody  to  anything  ;  that  it  would 
have  been  not  only  useless,  but  imprudent  and  danger- 
ous, to  feign  devotion  ;  and  that,  unless  under  the 
obligation  of  his  business  of  confessor  or  preacher,  a 
man  would  have  been  suspected,  if  he  did  not  imitate 
the  conduct  of  his  prince,  of  censuring  it.  Let  us 
remember,  in  this  connection,  the  fate  of  Madame 
de  Navailles,  who  was  driven  from  the  court — and 
whose  husband  was  deprived  of  all  his  offices — for 
having  walled  up  the  door  which  put  the  apartment 
of  Louis  XIV  in  communication  with  the  chamber  of 
the  lady's-maids.  This  is  all  the  profit  that  a  man  of 
hypocritical  or  sincere  piety  could  hope  to  gain  from 
devotion,  and  I  leave  it  to  the  reader  to  think  if  there 
were  many  who  were  eager  for  it.  Hypocrisy  is  not  one 
of  those  vices  which  are  self-originated,  and  certainly 
not  one  of  those  which  bring  their  own  gratification,  as 
avarice,  ambition,  or  debauchery.  It  does  not  live  for 
its  wry  mouth,  like  Harpagon  by  the  sight  of  his  gold. 

And  it  has  no  reason  or  cause  for  existence,  but  in  so 

96 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

far  as  it  leads  to  certain  solid  satisfactions — to  fortune, 
honour,  and  reputation. 

But  if  there  were  no  people  of  false  piety  at  the 
court  of  the  young  Louis  XIV,  there  were  others  of 
true  piety,  who  saddened  at  the  sight  of  this  other 
kind  of  "libertinism"  ;  and  I  do  not  suppose  that  we 
dispute  them  the  right  to  have  been  sincerely  sad — and 
more  than  sad,  to  have  been  scandalised — since,  after 
a  lapse  of  two  hundred  years,  we  still  allow  it,  in  their 
Histories  of  France^  to  the  grave  Henri  Martin  and  the 
lyrical  Michelet.  And  these  truly  pious  people  were 
not  called  the  Abbe  de  Pons,  or  the  Abbe  Roquette, 
or  the  Sieur  Charpy  de  Sainte-Croix,  as  the  annotators 
or  commentators  of  Tartufe  repeat  ad  nauseam ;  they 
were  of  higher  origin,  of  another  class,  and  more 
troublesome  and  irksome  to  the  king  himself  and  to 
Moliere.  First,  there  was  the  queen  mother,  Anne 
of  Austria,  the  secret  witness  of  the  tears  of  the  young 
queen  Marie-Therese,  who  feared  to  see  Louis  XIV 
endanger,  by  the  hasards  of  his  easy  love  affairs,  his 
health  especially,  the  glory  of  his  reign  in  this  world, 
and  his  safety  in  the  next.  There  was  the  Prince 
de  Conti — from  whom  Moliere  is  usually  said  to  have 
taken  the  model  and  the  measure  of  his  Don  Juan — 
and  there  was  his  sister,  the  Duchesse  de  Longueville, 
both  now  converted,  and  whose  entire  sincerity 
cannot,  for  any  reason  that  I  know,  be  doubted. 
There  was  also  that  eloquent  abbe  who  began  to 
preach,  or  rather  to  thunder,  in  the  pulpits  of  Paris, 


BRUNETlfeRE'S  ESSAYS 

against  The  love  of  worldly  pleasures — the  future 
Bishop  of  Condom  and  of  Meaux,  the  future  teacher 
of  the  Dauphin — till  the  time  came  for  him  to  write  his 
Maximes  sur  la  Comedte.  And,  in  the  town  as  at  the 
court,  there  were  the  Jansenists,  a  Desmares  and  a 
Singlin,  the  people  of  Port-Royal,  those  of  the  "party," 
as  was  then  said  ;  there  was  the  honest  and  gentle 
Nicole,  there  was  Arnauld,  there  was  this  austere  and 
passionate  Christian  who  used  what  strength  was  left 
him  to  scrawl  the  fragments  of  his  book  of  Pensees 
— there  was  Pascal  j  and  I  have  named  only  the  most 
important. 

Those  were  the  enemies  or  the  adversaries  of 
Moliere,  the  people  of  true  and  not  of  false  piety, 
those  whom  the  brilliancy  of  the  success  of  the  Ecole 
des  Femmes  had  made  to  murmur,  and  those  above 
all  whose  indignation  and  credit  threatened  or  could 
threaten  the  liberty  of  his  art.  From  every  sort  of 
motive  Moliere  feared  that  the  pious — "  the  good  and 
truly  pious,  whom  we  ought  to  follow  " — might  some 
day  restrain  the  vivacity  of  this  satire,  if  even  they  did 
not  go  the  length  of  quenching  it. 

"I  await  respectfully  the  judgment  which  your 
Majesty  will  deign  to  pronounce  on  this  matter  " —  so 
may  be  read  in  the  second  Placet  relating  to  Tartufe^ 
that  of  1667, — "  but  certain  it  is  that  I  must  no  longer 
think  of  making  comedies  if  the  Tartufes  gain  the 
day,  for  they  will  claim  the  right  thereby  of  persecut- 
ing me  more  than  ever,  and  will  try  to  find  something 

q8 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

to  cavil  at  even  in  the  most  innocent  things  that 
will  come  from  my  pen."  We  read  likewise  in  the 
triumphant  preface  of  1669:  "Either  the  comedy 
of  Tartufe  must  be  approved,  or  all  comedies  in 
general  must  be  condemned.  .  .  .  This  is  what 
people  have  insisted  on  so  furiously  of  late,  and 
never  were  they  more  incensed  against  the  theatre." 

Therein  lay  the  danger  for  Moliere.  He  doubted, 
instinctively,  that  Jansenism  might  do  for  the  drama 
what  Puritanism  had  done  in  England.  And  as 
for  us,  we  must  undoubtedly  congratulate  ourselves 
that  Jansenism  did  not  succeed,  but  we  must  not 
deny  that  Moliere,  in  writing  Tartufe^  attacked 
Jansenism,  and  in  Jansenism,  as  we  shall  now  see, 
religion  itself. 

This  would  never  be  doubted  but  for  the  accepted 
custom  of  considering  in  Tartufe  only  Tartufe  him- 
self; and  when  Tartufe  only  is  considered  there  is 
no  trouble  in  showing  that  he  really  is  Tartufe 
and  a  hypocrite.  "The  traitor  is  to  be  plainly 
seen  through  his  mask  ^  he  is  recognised  at  once 
in  his  true  colours ;  and  the  rolling  of  his  eyes 
and  his  honeyed  tones  impose" — only  on  Madame 
Pernelle,  an  old  fool,  and  her  son  Orgon.  Tartufe 
sweats  hypocrisy :  all  the  meaner  lusts  are  con- 
centrated in  him  as  it  were  to  make  him  a  monster 
of  moral  deformity  ;  however  comic  he  be,  he  in- 
spires fear,  and  disgust  perhaps  even  more  than 
fear ;  to  touch  him  we  would  wish  a  pair  of  tongs ; 

99 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

and  on  meeting  him  on  our  way  we  would  take 
care  not  to  run  up  against  him,  for  fear  of 
befouling  ourselves.  The  intention  here  is  manifest 
beyond  doubt.  Tartufe  is  the  satire  or  caricature 
of  hypocrisy ;  the  expressions  he  uses  could  not 
for  a  moment  deceive  anybody ;  and  if  one  were 
to  dare  to  offer  any  criticism  on  Moliere,  it 
would  be,  with  La  Bruyere,  that  he  has  painted 
him  in  too  crude  colours.  But  what  is  to  be  made 
of  the  other  characters,  and  of  Orgon  in  particular, 
who  is  undoubtedly  of  distinct  importance,  for  we 
must  remember  that  it  was  not  the  character  of 
Tartufe,  but  of  Orgon,  which  Moliere  interpreted 
in  his  piece,  just  as  he  acted  Arnolphe  in  the  Ecole 
des  FemmeSj  Alceste  in  the  Misanthrope^  and  Harpagon 
in  the  Avare  ?  And  it  is  really  on  Orgon,  as  much 
as  on  Tartufe,  that  the  whole  piece  turns  ;  it  is  he 
who  keeps  the  stage  from  the  first  act  to  the  last, 
while  Tartufe  appears  only  at  the  third  ;  and  for  a 
clear  understanding  of  affairs,  it  is  from  him  con- 
sequently, as  much  as  from  Tartufe,  fhat  we  must 
ask  Moliere's  secret. 

Now  Orgon  was  by  no  means  a  simpleton,  and 
Dorine,  from  the  first  act,  took  great  care  to  tell  us 
so.  "  During  our  troubles  he  acted  like  a  man  of  sense 
and  displayed  some  courage  in  the  service  of  his 
prince."  His  house  was  free  and  hospitable,  and  the 
presence  of  a  mother-in-law  had  brought  neither  dis- 
order nor  trouble.     A  good  husband,  a  good  father,  a 

100 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

good  master  was  Orgon  :  he  was  also  a  good  citizen. 
A  faithful  and  sure  friend,  he  was  chosen  from  among 
twenty  others  to  be  entrusted  with  a  matter  on  which 
depended  a  friend's  honour,  liberty,  and  life.  "But 
since  he  has  taken  so  strongly  to  Tartufe,  he  has 
become  a  perfect  dolt."  That  is  to  say,  since  he  met 
him,  all  his  former  good  qualities  had  turned  into  as 
many  faults.  Instead  of  being  the  indulgent  husband 
of  a  young  wife,  he  had  become  indifferent  and 
crotchety ;  the  tender  father  had  changed  into  a 
domestic  tyrant ;  the  man  of  honour  into  an  unfaith- 
ful guardian.  What  is  this  to  say — for  Orgon  is 
sincere,  his  devotion  is  true,  and  not  for  a  moment  is 
he  made  to  appear  as  a  dishonest  man,  and  still  less  as 
a  hypocrite — what  is  this  to  say  but  that  as  much  as 
he  advances  in  devotion,  so  much  does  he  advance 
towards  inhumanity  ?  Now,  "  he  could  see  brother, 
children,  mother,  and  wife  die,  without  troubling  him- 
self one  whit,"  as  he  said  while  hitting  his  nail  on 
his  teeth  ;  and  Tartufe  alone  accomplished  this  work, 
not  the  Tartufe,  let  it  be  understood,  who  covets  his 
wife  while  marrying  his  daughter,  but  the  Tartufe 
who  can  barely  be  seen,  he  whose  lessons  teach  only, 
according  to  the  language  of  Christianity,  no  heed 
of  the  things  of  this  world,  self-denial,  and  the  pure 
love  of  God. 

These  words  put  us  on  the  track  of  what  Moliere 
attacks  in  religion  ;  the  point  is  delicate  enough,  but 
it   is  important  to  mark  it.      Is  it  dogma  ?      Cer- 

lOI 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

tainly  not,  although  for  that  matter  he  thinks,  with 
the  "hbertines"  of  his  time,  men  like  Des  Barreaux  or 
Saint  Pavin,  that  "  to  oblige  a  man  of  sense  to  believe 
in  all  that  is  in  the  Bible,  even  to  the  tail  of  Tobias's 
dog,  is  absolutely  absurd."  Perhaps  it  is  the  evils  which 
fanaticism  has  caused  in  history  ?  No  again,  although 
this  idea,  which  passes  for  Voltaire's,  is  already  in 
Lucretius,  one  of  Moliere's  favourite  authors,  under 
whose  shelter  he  could  have  hidden  himself. 

Tantum  relligio  potuit  suadere  malorum. 

Or  is  it  then  morality,  I  mean  to  say  the  common 
morality,  the  morality  in  vogue,  the  morality  of  honest 
folk,  that  which  is  usually  said  to  be  sufficient  for  the 
affairs  of  life  ?  No,  not  even  that !  Moliere  is  an 
honest  fellow  too,  and  much  more  an  honest  fellow 
than  his  friend  La  Fontaine  ;  and  if  he  never  taught 
anything  very  lofty  or  noble — and  this  after  all  is 
not  the  business  of  comedy  —  he  at  least  taught 
nothing  which,  in  appearance,  is  not  wise  and 
reasonable. 

But  what  he  does  not  like  in  religion  is  that  which 
is  opposed  to  his  philosophy,  the  principle  on  which 
all  religion  worthy  of  its  name  reposes,  the  constraint, 
in  short,  which  it  places  on  us.  While  all  around 
him,  not  only  the  Jansenists,  but  the  Jesuits  also,  are 
teaching  that  human  nature  is  corrupted  in  its  sub- 
stance ;  that  we  carry  in  ourselves  our  most  dangerous 
enemies,  and   that   these  are  our   instincts ;  that   in 

102 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

following  their  impulse  we  run  of  our  own  accord  to 
eternal  damnation  ;  that  there  is  no  hope  of  safety  but 
in  keeping  a  tight  rein  on  them  ;  that  the  life  of  this 
world  has  been  given  us  not  to  be  used,  and  that  nature 
is  a  perpetual  source  of  combat,  struggle,  and  victory 
over  herself, — Moliere  believes,  as  we  have  shown, 
precisely  the  reverse.  He  believes  "  that  we  must 
refuse  our  body  or  our  senses  nothing  which  they 
desire  of  us  in  the  exercise  of  their  powers  or  natural 
faculties  "  ;  he  believes  that  in  following  our  instincts 
we  obey  the  wish  of  nature  ;  and,  since  we  ourselves 
form  part  of  nature,  he  believes  that  one  cannot  tell 
if  there  is  more  insolence  and  pride,  or  stupidity  and 
folly,  in  wishing  to  live  not  merely  apart  from  her, 
but  in  opposition  to  her. 

Is  the  contrast  not  evident  or  even  glaring  ?  Will 
it  not  be  granted  that  it  is  the  moral  constraint  which 
is  the  foundation  of  religion — and  had  alone  been  so 
since  the  appearance  of  Calvinism  and  Jansenism — 
which  Moliere  attacked  in  his  Tartufe  under  the  name 
of  hypocrisy  ?  Did  he  not  wish  to  show  us  that  in 
teaching  us  to  "set  our  hearts  on  nothing,"  religion 
taught  us  to  neglect,  not  so  much  ourselves  as  these 
"human  sentiments"  which  give  life  its  value? 
Did  he  not  wish  to  show,  in  short,  that  pious 
people,  whether  sincere  or  hypocritical,  are  always 
dangerous ;  that  in  proposing  for  the  efforts  of  men 
an  end  which  is  unattainable,  they  dissuade  them 
from    their    true   duties ;   and    that    in   preaching,  as 

103 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

they  do,  the  contempt  and  dread  of  this  world, 
they  turn  us  from  the  object  of  life,  which  is 
first  of  all  to  live  ? 

Here  it  is,  I  know,  that  the  sayings  of  Cleante  are 
appealed  to  :  "  There  is  false  devotion  as  there  is  false 
bravery  :  and  as  we  never  find  that  the  truly  brave 
are  those  who  make  much  noise  where  honour  leads 
them,  so  the  good  and  truly  pious,  in  whose  footsteps 
we  should  follow,  are  not  those  who  pull  so  many 
long  faces."  But,  to  appeal  to  these  lines,  it  would 
first  be  necessary  to  show  that  they,  and  the  speeches 
of  Cleante  generally,  are  the  expression  of  the  true 
thought  of  Moliere.  Now  this  cannot  be,  no  more 
than  Moliere  can  be  held  answerable  for  the  Alceste  or 
the  Philinte  of  his  Misanthrope ;  and  when,  too,  the 
Chrysalde  of  the  Ecole  des  Femmes  is  mentioned  in  this 
connection,  we  forget,  if  this  good  fellow  really  spoke 
in  the  name  of  Moliere,  what  is  the  strange  advice 
which  Moliere  would  thus  have  given  us,  and  that  it 
would  justify  the  most  violent  passages  of  the  Maximes 
sur  la  Comidie. 

Indeed  the  "  raisonneurs "  of  his  plays  do  not  act 
the  part  of  the  chorus  of  the  ancient  comedy  ;  they 
express  a  part  of  his  thought  only,  that  which  he 
believes  most  in  accordance  with  the  prejudices  of 
his  public  ;  and  their  speeches  are  but  a  bait  for  the 
pit.  And  so  what  is  the  distinction  Cleante  en- 
deavours  to   establish    between    the   sincere   and    the 

hypocritical  in   religion  ?      The  hypocritical,  to  him, 

104 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

are  all  those  who  make  a  show,  if  I  may  say  so,  who 
act  openly  in  some  way  or  other,  who  do  not  conceal 
their  devoutness  as  a  weakness  or  a  crime.  But  the 
sign  of  the  sincere  is  to  show  no  devoutness,  to  be 
content  to  be  devout  in  themselves,  and,  provided 
they  live  a  good  life,  to  let  others  live  as  they 
wish.  In  other  terms  still,  the  mark  of  true  piety, 
for  Cleante,  is  to  be  concerned  only  with  piety. 
As  soon  as  religion  aims  at  raising  itself  into  a  guide 
for  life,  he  begins  to  suspect  it,  as  he  also  says,  of 
ostentation  and  insincerity.  And  this  is  why,  were 
a  new  demonstration  needed  of  Moliere's  intentions, 
it  would  be  found  in  the  speeches  and  role  of  that 
character  whom  we  are  told  to  consider  his  interpreter. 
So  had  he  really  wished  to  shelter  his  Tartufe  from 
malevolent  interpretations,  I  shall  not  have  the  im- 
pertinence to  say  how  he  ought  to  have  set  about  it, 
but  it  is  not  Cleante  whom  he  would  have  chosen 
to  speak  in  his  name  ;  it  is  Elmire,  the  wife  of  Orgon, 
whose  tractable  and  sincere  devotion  he  would  have 
opposed  to  the  devotion,  sincere  too,  but  extravagant, 
of  her  booby  of  a  husband.  It  is  she,  since  he  has 
entrusted  her  with  unmasking  Tartufe,  whom  he 
would  likewise  have  entrusted  with  expressing  his 
respect  for  these  sentiments  of  which  the  language 
of  Tartufe  is  only  a  sacrilegious  parody,  she,  and 
not  Cleante,  who  takes  no  part  in  the  action,  who 
speaks  only  behind  the  scenes,  and  who  could  easily 
be  taken  out  of  the  piece  without  being  missed. 

105 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

So  at  least  has  he  done  in  the  Misanthrope^  where 
the  sincere  Eliante  decides  between  Alceste  and 
Philinte,  and  fills,  between  the  coquettishness  of 
Celimene  and  the  prudery  of  Arsinoe,  the  part  of 
nature  and  truth.  So  also  has  he  done  in  the 
Bourgeois  Gentilhomme^  and  so  in  the  Femmes  savantes^ 
where  it  is  not  the  old  fellow  Chrysale,  nor  his 
brother-in-law  Ariste,  nor  even  perhaps  Clitandre, 
but  Henriette  in  especial,  who  incarnates  his  true 
thought. 

But  the  Elmire  of  Tartufe  is  only  a  pleasant 
woman,  to  whom  every  religious  idea  may  be  said 
to  appear  a  stranger,  who  cannot  find  any  of  the 
necessary  words  to  reply  to  the  gross  declaration  of 
Tartufe.  '*  Others  would  perhaps  take  it  in  a  differ- 
ent fashion  ;  but  she  wishes  to  show  her  discretion  "  ; 
and  since,  moreover,  her  virtue  is  not  the  less  unim- 
peachable for  it,  what  is  this  to  say  but  that  by 
nature  "men  that  are  free  have  an  instinct  and  spur 
that  prompteth  them  unto  virtuous  actions,  and  with- 
draws them  from  vice"?  In  her  difficult  situation 
as  the  young  wife  of  an  old  husband,  as  the  mother- 
in-law  of  a  grown-up  girl  and  a  grown-up  man,  to 
avoid  giving  any  handle  to  slander  and  to  remain 
thoroughly  honest,  Elmire  had  only  to  follow  her 
nature,  and  had  not  the  least  need  of  correcting 
or  conquering  it,  or  even  of  trying  to  bring  it  to 
perfection. 

Contemporaries  —  and   their   impressions   must    be 
1 06 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

trusted — made  no  mistake  about  it ;  and  five  days 
after  the  first  performance  of  Tartufe^  the  Gazette  de 
France^  in  the  issue  of  17th  May  1664,  declared  the 
piece  "absolutely  injurious  to  religion,  and  capable 
of  producing  very  dangerous  eiFects."  Moliere,  now 
that  he  had  the  support  of  the  king,  showed  his  bold- 
ness by  replying  with  his  Don  "Juan.  He  did  better 
still  J  he  profited  by  the  quarrels  of  his  adversaries  ;  he 
had  the  tact  to  persuade  the  Jesuits  that  his  Tartufe 
was  a  retort  to  the  Lettres  provincialesy  and  to  per- 
suade the  Jansenists  that  it  was  the  continuation 
or  redoubling  of  these  Lettres.  It  is  Racine  who 
tells  us,  in  the  oft  -  cited  sentence,  that  "  the 
Jansenists  said  that  the  Jesuits  were  represented 
in  that  comedy,  but  the  Jesuits  flattered  themselves 
that  it  was  aimed  at  the  Jansenists."  And,  indeed, 
when  Tartufe  comes  upon  the  stage,  speaking  the 
verse  : 

Laurent,  put  by  my  hair-shirt  and  my  scourge  ; 

as  also  when  he  says,  in  off^ering  his  handkerchief  to 
Dorine : 

Go  hide  thy  bosom,  for  I  hate  the  sight, 

it  seems  as  if  it  were  a  Jansenist  who  spoke.  On  the 
other  hand,  was  it  not  the  Jesuit  who  was  represented 
in  his  turn  when  Tartufe  ardently  explained  to  Elmire 
"  the  art  of  rectifying  the  evil  of  the  act  by  the  purity 

of  the  intention  "  ? 

107 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

But  the  truth,  which  accords  better  with  all  we 
have  just  seen,  was  that  Moliere  had  made  no  distinc- 
tion J  and  the  fact  is  that  he  mixed  up  every  pious 
person,  every  enemy  of  the  theatre,  every  foe  to 
nature,  one  and  all — Jansenists  and  Jesuits,  Escobar 
and  Arnauld,  Pascal  and  Bourdaloue — in  his  bold 
derision  of  devotion,  or  rather  of  religion  itself.  If 
there  could  ever  have  been  any  mistake,  this  was 
recognised  by  all,  when,  in  1669,  after  many  difficulties, 
Tartufe  at  last  appeared  publicly  on  the  stage.  The 
test  of  the  representation  decided  the  meaning  of  the 
piece.  Jesuits  or  Jansenists,  each  alike  felt  the  attack  ; 
and  this  is  forgotten  by  those  who,  even  at  this  day, 
can  see  in  Tartufe  only  a  machine  directed  against 
Port-Royal :  they  forget  that  nobody  was  more  in- 
dignant at  it,  nor  expressed  more  eloquently  the 
painful  indignation  of  every  truly  pious  person,  than 
Bourdaloue,  in  his  Sermon  sur  I'Hypocrisie. 

As  to  the  question  of  discovering  now  if  Moliere 
deceived  Louis  XIV,  and  if  the  king,  throughout  the 
whole  affair,  was  the  dupe  of  his  valet-de-chambre 
— it  may  be  pretty,  but  it  is  stupid  ;  and,  to  ask 
it  in  these  terms,  is  to  be  oneself  the  dupe  of  mere 
words.  For  why  should  Moliere  have  deceived  Louis 
XIV,  or  why  should  Louis  XIV  have  been  want- 
ing in  discernment  ?  But  we  know,  all  the  same, 
that  if  the  king  did  not  see  the  danger,  he  suspected 
it,  since  he  hesitated  for  five  years  to  allow  the  repre- 
sentation of  Tartufe;  and  Moliere,  on  his  side,  had 

108 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

no  occasion  to  deceive  his  master  :  he  was  uneasy 
only  about  his  own  pleasures,  and  in  the  enemies 
of  the  theatre  he  could  see  only  the  silent  censors 
of  his  own  failings. 

But,  in  this  connection,  has  it  not  even  been  held 
that  Louis  XIV  commanded  Tartufe  of  Moliere  ? 
Rapin  says  so  in  his  curious  Memoirs.  What  at  least 
is  certain,  is  that  religion,  at  all  times,  before  being  a 
rule  for  the  inner  life,  was  for  Louis  XIV  an  affair 
of  State.  Long  after  Tartufe,  in  the  question  of  the 
liberties  of  the  Gallican  Church,  he  was  to  have  no 
fear  in  threatening  to  drive  it  even  to  schism,  if  need 
be,  in  order  to  bring  about  the  triumph  of  his 
religious  policy.  A  power  apart,  he  never  let  any 
opportunity  pass  of  making  the  representatives  of 
religion  feel  that  his  wish  should  remain  always  above 
it.  And  if,  from  many  reasons,  we  do  not  believe 
that  he  occasioned  Tartufe,  everything  allows  us  to 
hold  that,  when  Moliere  gave  him  the  opportunity, 
he  availed  himself  of  it  as  a  tool  of  government. 

Whether  they  were  sincere  or  hypocritical,  Louis 
always  suspected  these  pious  people  of  wishing  to 
impose  on  him  a  will  other  than  his  own,  perhaps 
even  of  aiming,  like  the  Protestants  hitherto,  at  form- 
ing a  party,  a  state  within  a  state.  After  long  hesita- 
tion— which  he  conceded  chiefly  on  the  entreaties  of 
his  mother,  or  perhaps  on  those  of  the  Archbishop 
of  Paris,  M.  de   Perefixe,  his  old   tutor,  and  M.  de 

Lamoignon — he  let  Tartufe  be  acted.     And  knowing 

109 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

that  the  piece  was  "likely  to  produce  very  strange 
effects,"  he  doubtless  believed  himself  strong  enough 
to  prevent  things  going  further  than  he  vv^ished,  but 
he  was  the  dupe  of  nobody ;  or  rather  it  is  precisely 
because  he  had  measured  the  probable  consequences 
of  the  comedy  that  he  ended  by  authorising  its 
representation. 

Is  this,  moreover,  not  what  is  understood  when  he 
is  praised  for  "  having  gained  on  that  day  one  of  the 
most  glorious  victories  of  his  reign  "  ?  For,  other- 
wise, what  could  be  said,  and  for  what  could  he  be 
praised  ?  Yet  he  is  praised  for  having  better  under- 
stood, in  spite  of  fanatics,  if  there  were  any  at  his  court, 
the  true  interests  of  religion  than  all  the  people  of 
sincere  and  deep  religion  who  were  about  him.  It 
was  they  who  made  the  mistake  in  thinking  them- 
selves attacked  and  wounded  by  Tartufe.  They  did 
not  understand  Moliere.  In  distinguishing  false  devo- 
tion from  the  true,  "  the  mask  from  the  person,"  and 
"the  false  money  from  the  good,"  they  did  not  see 
the  service  which  that  "  reforming  comedy  "  rendered 
to  the  cause  of  religion.  But  Louis  XIV  saw  it, 
since  he  was,  as  it  were,  outside  of  and  above  the 
dispute  ;  he  is  praised  for  having  had  the  courage  to 
join  in  it ;  and  we,  to-day,  pretend  to  see  even  better 
what  he  saw  so  well. 

Need  I  show  the  absurdity  of  this  position,  and  that 

of  itself  it  could  be  an  adequate  interpretation  to  us  of 

the  true  intention  of  Moliere  ?    To  "  acquit "  Tartufe^ 

no 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

it  supposes,  indeed,  tiiat  where  the  Bossuets  and  Bour- 
daloues  saw  nothing,  it  is  we,  dramatic  critics  and 
lecturers  in  the  Odeon,  sons  of  Voltaire  and  of  the 
eighteenth  century — who  make  use  of  religion,  when 
we  do  make  use  of  it,  only  on  the  day  of  our 
marriage  or  burial,  with  the  accompaniment  of  bari- 
tones and  sopranos — it  is  we  who  know,  who  see 
clearly,  who  can  say  exactly  where  religion  ends  and 
hyprocrisy  begins  !  But  if  we  were  sincere,  or  rather 
if  we  only  took  the  trouble  to  think,  we  would  realise 
that  what  pleases  us  in  Tartufe  is  just  Moliere's  effort 
to  separate  morality  from  religion.  We  have  no  need 
of  a  rule  of  good  life,  and  certainly  not  of  a  rule  outside 
of  and  above  nature :  this  is  what  Tartufe  teaches  clearly 
enough,  and  this  is  what  we  like  in  the  usual  inter- 
pretation. We  are  very  pleased  to  see  all  those  who 
labour  to  correct  their  nature  fall,  like  Orgon  and 
his  mother,  into  absurdity  and  folly ;  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  we  admire,  in  the  honesty  of  Elmire  and 
the  good  sense  of  Dorine,  the  beauty  of  our  indiffer- 
ence. But  it  would  be  time  also  to  recognise  that 
this  is  the  opposite  of  religion.  It  would  be  time 
above  all  to  acknowledge  that,  if  it  is  the  opposite,  the 
truly  pious  people  have  the  right  to  feel  hurt  by 
Tartufe;  that  if  the  wound  has  not  closed  for  two 
hundred  and  fifty  years,  there  is  no  doubt  that  it  was 
deep  ;  that  the  hand  which  made  it  meant  to  make 
it ;  that  therefore  it  was  not  only  false  devotion, 
but  also  true,  which  Moliere  meant  to  attack  ;  and 
III 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

that  it  was  for  the  gain  of  nature  that  he  meant  to 
destroy  the  religion  of  effort  and  moral  constraint. 


IV 

The  Apology  of  Nature 

The  last  comedies  of  Moliere,  far  from  belying  this 
definition  of  his  philosophy,  confirm  it,  and  in  the 
author  of  George  Dand'in^  the  Bourgeois  Gentilhomme^ 
or  the  Malade  imaginaire^  with  all  his  genius,  there 
is  still  to  be  found  the  thought  of  the  author  of  the 
t.cole  des  Femmes.  Consider  only  the  place  and  role — 
not  of  the  lady's-maids  but  the  servants,  which  is  not 
at  all  the  same  thing — of  Nicole  in  the  Bourgeois 
Gentilhomme^  or  Martine,  too,  in  the  Femmes  savantes, 
true  daughters  of  nature  if  there  ever  were,  who  do 
not  try  to  be  witty,  like  Nerine  in  Monsieur  de 
P ourceaugnac  or  Dorine  in  Tartufe^  but  whose  artless 
good  sense  escapes  in  proverbial  sallies,  and  who  make 
us  laugh,  and  are  comic  or  droll,  only  by  force  of 
being  true.  Does  it  not  seem  that  they  are  there  to 
tell  us  that  all  that  is  known  as  instruction  or  educa- 
tion is  useless  where  nature  is  wanting,  and  cannot, 
wherever  she  does  exist,  but  thwart  and  falsify  her  ? 
A  single  word  from  them  is  sufficient  to  disconcert 
the  novel  science  of  M.  Jourdain,  or  close  the  mouth 

I  12 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

of  the  majestic  Philaminte  ;  and  this  word  they  did 
not  search  for  ;  it  was  suggested  to  them  by 
nature,  that  nature  which  their  masters,  in  their 
attempts  at  improvement,  have,  as  we  see,  only 
changed,  disfigured,  and  corrupted.  Or  again,  while 
their  masters  sink,  at  each  step,  deeper  in  absurdities, 
they  attract  us  by,  if  I  may  say  so,  their  simplicity, 
their  ignorance,  and  their  naturalness. 

Consider  also  the  nature  of  the  subjects  and  the 
lesson  to  be  drawn  from  them.     In  this  respect,  the 
last  of  Moliere's   comedies — this   Malade   imaginaire 
which  has  sometimes  been  wrongly  placed,  with  Pour- 
ceaugnac  and  Scapin,  among  his  farces — is  perhaps  the 
most   instructive.     The  cause  has  often   been   asked 
of  Moliere's  strange  animosity  against  medicine  and 
doctors.      Were   the   Purgons   and   Diafoiruses    then 
also   "one    of  the   scourges   of   the    century,"  and, 
in    ridiculing    them  on    the   stage  with   unmeasured 
liberty — of  which  there  is  not  a  single  blow  that  does 
not  strike  their  successors — did  Moliere  believe  that 
he  was  doing  public  health  the  same  service  as  he  did 
morality  in  attacking  the  Tartufes  ?     Or  shall  we  say 
that,  having  himself  proved   the  uselessness  of  their 
prescriptions  and  the  vanity  of  their  art,  he  only  re- 
lieved himself  at  their  expense — from  his  Don  Juan 
to  his  Malade  imaginaire — of  a  valetudinarian's  ran- 
cour !     No ;  but  the  truth  is  that  in   his   eyes  the 
pretensions  of  doctors  are  no  less  absurd  in  their  own 
way   than    those  of  bigots.     They  also,  like  bigots, 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

believe  themselves  stronger  and  cleverer  than  nature, 
and  pride  themselves,  likewise,  on  restoring  and  rectify- 
ing her,  and,  vv^hen  necessary,  on  improving  her.  With 
their  remedies,  like  the  others  with  their  long  faces, 
they  believe  themselves  clever  enough  to  thwart  her 
workings  ;  they  promise  us,  if  we  will  only  listen,  to 
give  us  back,  with  their  bleedings,  purgings,  and  bath- 
ings, the  powers  which  we  have  lost ;  and  this  matter, 
which,  according  to  the  expression  of  Lucretius,  nature 
incessantly  demands  for  other  uses,  they  flatter  them- 
selves on  fixing,  so  to  speak,  and  eternising  in  us. 
Is  this  not  actually  what  Beralde  says  so  well  in  a 
long  scene  of  the  Malade  imaginaire,  which  is  very 
carefully  abridged  when  acted,  and  from  which,  for 
this  reason,  I  take  the  liberty  of  reproducing  a  few 
lines. 

"  If  we  leave  nature  alone,"  he  says,  "  she  recovers 
gently  of  herself  from  the  disorder  into  which  she 
has  fallen  " ;  and  as  Argan  replies  that  one  may  still 
"assist  this  nature  by  certain  things,"  he  answers  with 
an  insistence  and  harshness  which  are  new  :  "  Good 
heavens,  brother,  these  are  mere  ideas,  with  which  we 
love  to  beguile  ourselves.  When  a  doctor  speaks  to 
you  of  aiding,  assisting,  and  comforting  nature,  of 
taking  away  from  her  what  annoys  her  and  giving 
her  what  she  lacks,  of  re-establishing  her  and  putting 
her  in  the  full  command  of  her  functions  ;  when  he 
speaks  to  you  of  purifying  the  blood,  of  regulating 

the   bowels  and  the  brain,  of  reducing   the   spleen, 

114 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

of  putting  the  chest  in  order,  of  strengthening  the 
heart,  and  of  having  secrets  for  prolonging  life  to  an 
advanced  age,  he  is  just  telling  you  the  romance  of 
medicine." 

These  words  seem  characteristic  enough,  and  while 
they  throw  light  on  the  folly  of  Argan — which  is  to 
wish  to  be  ill  in  spite  of  nature — there  is  no  doubt  as 
to  where  they  lead  us.     If  Moliere  was  no  less  bitter 
and   passionate   against   doctors  than  against  pedants 
and  hypocrites,  his  reasons  are   the  same,  or   rather 
they  are  identical.     He  inveighs  against  all,  no  matter 
what  they  be,  a  Purgon  or  a  Trissotin,  a  Vadius  or 
a   Tartufe,  who  do   not    follow   nature,    even    when 
their  pretensions  are  not  so   extravagant  as  to  aim 
at  combatting  her.     It  is  they  who  will  fall ;  and  it 
will  be  enough  for  Sganarelle  or  Toinette  to  don  the 
robe  or  wear  the  pointed  bonnet  to  know  as  much 
as  all  the  Diafoiruses  in  the  world,  as   the  natural 
honesty  of  Elmire  was  enough  to  outplay  the  plans 
of  Tartufe,  as  it   was  enough   for  Agnes   to   be  in- 
structed by  nature  to  be  able  to  outplay  the  politics 
of  Arnolphe.     For,  once  again,  they  are  not  fools, 
or,  if  we  prefer  Moliere's  expression,  they  are  not 
**  betes,"    these    Arnolphes,    Tartufes,    and    Purgons. 
The  last  in   particular  "  have,  for  the  most    part,  a 
good    deal    of  classical   learning,    can   speak   in    fine 
Latin,  can  name  all  the  diseases  in  Greek,  and  can 
define  and  classify  them."     But,  "as  for  curing  them, 
they  know  nothing  about  that,"  and  never  will  know, 
"5 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

and  nature,  cleverer  than  all  their  tricks,  will  of  her- 
self triumph  in  the  long  run. 

This  is  the  more  surprising,  considering  that  life 
was  not  always  pleasant  for  Moliere,  and  that  he 
lacked  neither  annoyances,  nor  humiliations,  nor 
troubles  too  of  every  sort.  If  his  irregular  and  rov- 
ing youth  had  been  little  more  to  him  than  a  long 
apprenticeship  in  the  contempt  which  was  then  meted 
out  to  the  comedian,  the  favour  even  of  Louis  XIV 
was  unable  to  protect  him,  in  his  maturity,  from  the 
usually  refined  but  sometimes  brutal  insolence  of  the 
people  of  the  court,  and  still  less  from  the  grossness 
of  the  pit.  I  say  nothing  of  the  difficulties  or 
quarrels  he  had,  in  his  position  of  company  manager, 
with  his  rival  comedians,  with  his  actors,  with  his 
authors,  or,  as  author  himself,  with  his  adversaries 
and  detractors.  Moliere's  enemies  did  not  injure 
him  :  and  after  all,  to  fight  as  he  did,  in  returning 
blow  for  blow — in  replying  to  the  Portrait  du  Peintre 
by  the  Impromptu  de  Versailles^  or  to  the  prohibition 
of  Tartufe  by  the  writing  of  Don  'Juan — is  a  way  to 
feel  the  pleasure  of  living. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  we  know  the  worries  of  his 

domestic   life,  and,  without   troubling    to   defend   or 

attack  once  more  the  virtue  of  Armande  Bejart,  we 

know,  and  cannot  doubt,  what    Moliere  suffered   by 

having  married  her.     Younger  than  him  by  twenty 

years,    coquettish,    light-headed,    fast    perhaps,    and 

dragging  after  her  a  train  of  admirers  whose    "fair 
ii6 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

hair,  long  nail,  and  falsetto  voice  had  been  able  to 
find  the  secret  of  charming  her,"  Mdlle.  Moliere  taught 
her  husband  the  reality  of  these  tortures  of  jealousy 
and  this  humiliation  of  loving  what  is  despised,  whicli 
he  has  himself  so  often  expressed  : 

"Strange  thing  it  is  to  love,  and  that  men  should 
be  subject  to  such  v^^eakness  for  these  traitresses.  .  .  . 
Their  mind  is  vi^icked,  and  their  soul  is  weak  ;  there 
is  nothing  more  feeble,  more  stupid,  more  faithless  ; 
yet,  despite  all  that,  everything  in  the  world  is  done 
for  these  creatures  !  " 

How  many  times  must  Moliere  have  repeated  to 
himself  these  lines  of  his  Ecole  des  Femmes !  Things 
went  so  far  as  to  lead  to  a  separation,  and,  from  1666 
to  1 67 1,  Moliere  and  his  wife  saw  each  other  only  at 
the  theatre. 

Further,  his  illness  began  to  add  to  all  the  causes  for 
his  being  discontented  with  others  and  with  himself, 
and,  if  it  cannot  be  said  that  from  this  very  year  1666 
he  began  to  die  slowly,  it  is  at  least  true  that  from 
this  time  he  lost,  never  to  recover  it  again,  the  cheer- 
ful good  humour  of  his  earlier  years.  Life,  which  up 
to  then  had  been  "  equally  mingled  with  sweetness  and 
pleasure,"  had  no  longer  for  him  "  any  moment  of  satis- 
faction or  sweetness  "  ;  and,  when  he  had  to  quit  it,  so 
well  was  he  prepared,  that  death  doubtless  came  to  him 
as  a  deliverance. 

This  explains  the  characteristics  of  his  last  pieces — 

of  some  of  them  at  least — of  this  Malade  imaginaire 

117 


BRUNETlfeRE'S  ESSAYS 

of  which  we  were  speaking,  of  the  Bourgeois  Gentil- 
homme^  and  George  Dandin.  The  satire  is  plainly 
more  harsh,  the  mirth  more  bitter,  and,  if  I  may 
say  so,  the  laughter  more  conclusive.  Even  the 
import  is  different. 

No  doubt  the  question  was  to  be  treated  differently 
later,  but  has  Rousseau  himself  shown  up  more 
eloquently  the  iniquity  in  the  differences  of  men's 
circumstances  than  the  author  of  George  Dandin? 
For  what  would  be  more  immoral  than  George 
Dandin^  if  in  this  did  not  He  its  true  meaning  and 
its  true  lesson  ?  And  has  the  author  of  Candide  ever 
treated  "this  beggarly  life"  more  outrageously  than 
the  author  of  the  Malade  imaginaire?  What  do  I 
say, — the  author  of  Candide?  It  is  the  author  of 
Gulliver  I  should  say  ;  it  is  of  Swift  that  I  think 
every  time  I  see  the  Malade  imaginaire  acted,  it  is 
of  the  bold,  cynical,  and  violent  character  of  his  jest- 
ing. Read  and  re-read  the  Malade  imaginaire  from 
any  point  of  view ;  take  all  its  characters  one  after 
the  other ;  Argan  himself,  and  Beline,  and  Angelique, 
and  M.  Bonnefoi,  and  Toinette,  and  the  Purgons, 
and  the  Diafoiruses,  even  the  little  Louison,  never  did 
Moliere,  unless  perhaps  in  his  Avare^  place  together 
on  the  stage  a  like  collection  of  imbeciles  or  rogues  ; 
and  never  really — still  excepting  his  Avare — did  he 
mark  with  stronger  touch  the  stupidity  and  rascality 
which  is  often  hidden  under  the  apparent  regularity  and 

respectability  of  bourgeois  virtue.     As  he  was  by  birth 

ii8 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

naturally  melancholy,  as  has  been  remarked,  we  are 
almost  tempted  to  believe  that  his  naturalism  would 
have  ended,  had  he  lived  longer,  by  turning,  as  with 
some  of  our  contemporaries,  to  a  sort  of  pessimism. 
It  is  a  curious  mirth  that  shows  itself  in  George 
Dandin  and  the  Malade  imaginaire^  a  scornful  and  un- 
kind mirth,  the  mirth  of  those  who  force  themselves 
to  laugh,  from  fear  of  being  obliged  to  weep. 

If  however,  amongst  all  this,  the  philosophy  of 
Moliere  is,  as  we  have  seen,  still  present,  and  still  the 
same  ;  if  he  cannot  keep  from  returning,  between  two 
domestic  scenes  or  two  tiffs,  to  the  vindication  of 
nature  ;  if  he  continues  to  scoff  at  those  who  wish  to 
encroach  on  the  rights  of  this  mother  of  all  health,  of 
all  wisdom,  of  all  virtue,  how  must  this  philosophy 
have  been  at  his  heart,  and  must  he  not  have  been 
much  more  deeply  imbued  with  it  than  he  himself 
believed  !  Listen  rather  to  the  Angelique  of  George 
Dandin  :  "  With  your  permission,  I  would  play  with 
the  happy  days  which  youth  offers  me,  and  take  the 
sweet  liberties  which  age  permits."  This  is  still  the 
language  of  the  Ecole  des  Femmes.  Neither  the  ex- 
periences of  life  nor  the  sorrows  of  his  last  years  had 
any  effect  on  that. 

How  shall  we  best  pursue  what  makes  for  pleasure  ? 

This   is   the  cry  of  nature ;   and  when  one  knows 

men,  when  one  has  judged  them,  when  one  has  himself 

experienced  the  vanity  of  things,  how  shall  we  cling 
119 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

yet  more  closely  to  his  principle  ?  Is  it  not  then, 
above  all,  that  life  seems  good,  and  then,  before  she 
escapes  us,  that  we  hasten  to  enjoy  her  ?  So  let 
us  follow  nature.  This  is  Moliere's  rule  of  rules — I 
mean  that  which  determines  the  others,  and  on  which 
they  all  necessarily  hinge  :  and  the  end  of  this  work 
thus  joins  on  to  the  beginning.  I  have  only  to  show 
that,  as  soon  as  he  was  dead,  it  was  in  this  way  that 
he  was  understood,  and,  as  his  work  still  lives,  it  only 
remains  for  me  to  state  the  place  it  gives  Moliere  in 
the  history  of  ideas. 


V 

The  Comedy  of  Moliere  in  the  History  of  Ideas 

"M.  Moliere,"  says  the  learned  Baillet  in  h\&Jugements 
des  SavantSy  "  is  one  of  the  most  dangerous  enemies  that 
the  age  or  the  world  has  raised  up  against  the  church, 
and  he  is  the  more  formidable  as  he  still  makes  after 
his  death  the  same  havoc  in  the  heart  of  his  readers  as 
he  made  in  his  lifetime  in  that  of  his  spectators.  .  .  . 
Gallantry  is  not  the  only  science  to  be  learned  in  the 
school  of  Moliere,  but  also  the  most  ordinary  maxims 
of  licentiousness  against  the  true  sentiments  of  re- 
ligion, whatever  the  enemies  of  bigotry  may  say,  and 

we   can   assert   that  his   Tartufe  is  one  of  the    least 

1 20 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

dangerous  to  lead  us  to  irreligion  " — it  is  Baillet  who 
underlines — "  the  seeds  of  which  are  scattered  in  so 
cunning  and  hidden  a  way  in  most  of  his  other  pieces, 
that  we  may  affirm  that  it  is  infinitely  more  difficult 
to  resist  its  influence  there  than  where  he  openly 
and  indiscriminately  ridicules  the  bigoted  and  the 
devout." 

When  these  lines  appeared,  in  1686,  twelve  or 
thirteen  years  after  Moliere's  death,  no  voice  was 
raised,  as  far  as  I  know,  to  protest  against  Baillet's 
judgment.  If  there  was  a  party  of  libertinism  or 
irreligion,  nobody  then  doubted  that  the  author  of 
Tartufe  had  belonged  to  it ;  none  of  his  contemporaries 
made  any  mistake  about  the  character  of  his  work  ; 
and  nobody,  in  short,  would  then  have  dared  to  pre- 
tend that  the  blows  he  had  aimed  at  the  bigots  had 
not  struck,  at  the  same  time,  the  pious  and  religion 
itself.  One  question  alone  remains  :  what  had  become, 
during  the  last  sixty  years,  of  the  doctrine  bequeathed 
to  Moliere  by  his  masters,  and  transmitted  to  them, 
as  we  have  seen,  from  Montaigne  and  Rabelais  ? 

There  is  no  lack  of  information  j  and,  if  it  was  not 

against  libertines,  I  should  like  to  know  against  whom 

it  was  that  Pascal  had  thought  of  writing,  even  before 

the  appearance  of  Moliere,  that  Apologie  de  la  Religion 

chretienne  of  which  the  Pensees  are  the  fragments.    Since 

for  more  than  a  hundred  years  the  editors  of  the  P^wjm 

have  arranged  them   in   an  order   which  is  the  more 

arbitrary  the  more  it  differs  from  that  of  the  edition  of 
121 


BRUNETIjfcRE'S  ESSAYS 

1670,  published  by  Port-Royal,  it  has  been  and  is  still 
too  often  believed  that  Pascal  wrote  for  himself,  with- 
out other  intention  than  to  resolve  his  own  doubts  and 
to  be  assured  on  the  foundations  of  his  belief.  But 
it  is  sufficient  to  go  back  to  the  edition  of  1670,  and 
to  re-read  in  it  the  celebrated  fragment  Contre  Vln- 
difference  des  Athees  to  be  assured  that,  if  death  had 
not  come  to  interrupt  it,  the  Apologie  de  la  Religion 
chretienne  was  to  have  been,  like  the  Provinciales, 
primarily  a  polemic,  and  that,  after  "  easy-going 
piety,"  it  was  libertinism  that  Pascal  proposed  to 
combat. 

"  I  know  not  who  has  sent  me  into  the  world,'*  he 
makes  the  free-thinker  say,  "  nor  what  is  the  world, 
nor  what  I  am  myself.  ...  As  I  know  not  whence 
I  come,  so  I  know  not  whither  I  go,  and  I  only  know 
that  on  leaving  this  world  I  fall  for  ever  into  nothing- 
ness, or  into  the  hands  of  an  angry  God.  .  .  .  And 
from  all  that  I  conclude  that  I  ought  therefore  to  pass 
all  the  days  of  my  life  without  thinking  of  what  must 
happen  to  me,  and  that  I  have  only  to  follow  my  inclina- 
tions without  thought  or  anxiety^  .  .  .  and  in  treating 
with  scorn  those  who  would  be  troubled  with  another 
care,  I  will  proceed  without  foresight  and  without 
fear,  .  .  .  and  let  myself  be  gently  led  to  death, 
uncertain  of  the  eternity  of  my  future  condition." 
(Pensees.  Edition  of  1 670.  Contre  F Indifference  des 
Athees^  1-8.) 

Here  we  recognise  the  language  of  Montaigne.     I 
122 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

cannot  say  that  it  was  also  that  of  Descartes ;  I  have 
endeavoured  to  show,  however,  in  another  essay,*  that 
with  his  tendency  to  treat  as  science  the  truths  of 
religion  and  the  rules  of  morality,  Descartes  did  not 
fail  to  assist  the  progress  of  indifference  and  liber- 
tinism. Or  rather  what  was,  before  his  time,  merely 
a  way  of  living  just  as  it  was  a  fashion  of  thought, 
he  founded,  if  I  may  say  so,  on  reason,  and  conse- 
quently on  right  ;  and  though  the  libertines  did  not 
fall  in  exactly  with  Cartesianism,  they  found  in  it 
the  excuse  and  justification  of  their  usual  rules  of 
conduct. 

This  is  proved  by  a  passage  in  Spinoza,  in  that  Ethicy 
where  I  can  see,  on  the  whole,  only  a  doctrine  of 
liberation,  and,  as  in  the  De  Natura  Rerum  of  Lucre- 
tius, an  endeavour  to  emancipate  human  life  from 
the  terrors  with  which  it  is  oppressed  by  the  vain 
phantoms  of  superstition.  In  the  name  of  Cartesianism 
and  epicureanism,  then  banded  together  against  re- 
ligion, is  it  not  really  to  Pascal,  is  it  not  to  the  Pensees, 
which  had  appeared  five  or  six  years  earlier,  is  it  not 
to  the  Christian  moralists — Protestants  or  Jansenists 
— that  Spinoza  replies  in  the  following  lines  ? 

"  Most  of  those  who  have  hitherto  treated  of  human 
passion  and  morality  seem  to  have  spoken  of  them,  not 
at  all  as  things  which  are  natural  and  regulated  accord- 
ingly by  the  laws  of  nature ^  but  as  things  which  are  outside 

*  "  Jansenistes  et  Cartesiens,"  in  the  fourth  series  of  the  Etudet  critiques 
iur  Phistoire  de  la  litte'rature  fratifaise, — Translator. 

123 


BRUNETliRE'S  ESSAYS 

of  nature.  Or  rather,  they  represent  man  in  nature  as 
one  empire  within  another.  .  .  .  This  is  why,  far 
from  attributing  the  inconstancy  or  feebleness  of  man 
to  the  laws  of  nature,  they  impute  them  to  some  vice 
or  other  of  human  nature,  which  accordingly  some 
bemoan  and  others  deride  or  despise,  or  end  by  hating^ 
(Ethics  III.,  Preamble.) 

This  was  the  case  of  the  Protestants  in  whose  midst 
lived  the  author  of  the  Ethics^  the  case  of  the  Jansenists, 
and  the  case  also  of  the  author  of  the  Penshs.  But 
this  is  also  the  explicit  and  authentic  evidence  of  the 
progress  which  the  philosophy  of  nature  had  made  in 
the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  this 
we  must  knov^,  if  we  wish  to  know  exactly  what  was, 
between  1660  and  1680,  the  substance  of  the  thought 
of  our  "  libertines." 

They  did  not  exactly  believe  that  nature  was  good, 
in  the  sense  that  the  author  of  the  Nouvelle  Helotse 
and  of  iimile  was  to  understand  it,  but  no  more  did 
they  believe  that  she  was  bad.  They  held  only  that 
she  was  nature,  that  her  inspirations  or  counsels  coufd 
not  differ  in  general  from  those  of  wisdom  : 

Nunquam  aliud  natura,  aliud  sapientia  dicit ; 

and  they  said  in  particular — it  is  the  expression  of  La 

Mothe  Le  Vayer,  one  of  Moliere's  intimate  friends — 

that  to  try  to  resist  her  is  to  attempt  to  row  against 

the  current.     Not  that  we  should  always  follow  her, 

or  always  obey  her  impulses  : 

124 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

What  once  a  Greek  to  great  Augustus  spake, 

We  may  for  counsel  just  and  useful  take  : 

That  when  to  angry  noise  your  words  would  tend, 

Run  o'er  your  alphabet  from  end  to  end  ; 

The  while  to  gentler  mood  your  thoughts  will  move, 

And  'scape  the  follies  which  your  shame  would  prove. 

The  counsels  of  nature  are  not  always  happy,  and 
they  are  not  always  clear.  But,  in  refusing  to  follow 
her,  we  must  at  least  be  careful  not  to  thwart  her,  and 
to  identify  nothing  with  her  movements  that  is  not 
taken  or  deduced  from  her  herself,  if  I  may  say  so,  and 
derived  from  her  essentials.  We  should  therefore  not 
tell  a  man  to  separate  himself  from  nature,  but  rather 
to  conform  to  her,  to  use  her  as  the  members  do  the 
stomach,  to  remember  that,  being  of  her,  he  lives 
only  by  her,  and,  in  short,  never  to  treat  her  as  a 
hostile  power.  But  is  it  this  that  every  religion 
teaches,  and,  like  religion,  every  discipline  which  does 
not  place  in  life  itself,  and  in  the  pleasure  of  living,  the 
object  and  end  of  life  ?  The  consequence  is  evident, 
and  there  is  no  need  for  me  here  to  state  it  at  length. 

It  was  of  this  philosophy,  so  clearly  defined  and  so 

precise,  that  Moliere  was  the  interpreter,  and  these 

are  the  "cunning  and  hidden  seeds  of  irreligion"  which 

Baillet  discovered  in  almost  all   his  comedies.     The 

partisans  of  this  philosophy  were  more  numerous  in  the 

seventeenth  century  than  is  generally  believed,  and — 

to  take  but  one  example — the  Contes  and  Fables  even  of 

his  friend  La  Fontaine  insinuate  it  no  less  subtly  than 

125 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

do  the  masterpieces  of  Moliere.     One  and  all,  with  a 

consciousness  more  or  less  clear  of  their  own  work, 

whether  indifFerents  or  sceptics,  libertines  or  atheists, 

for  those  were  the  names  they  were  then  given,  they 

continued  the  pagan  tradition  of  the  Renaissance,  and, 

by  an  effort  opposed  to  that  of  the  Pascals,  Bossuets, 

and  Bourdaloues,  worked  at  unchristianising  the  spirit 

of  the   seventeenth    century,   or,   if  I    may    use    the 

word,  at  laicising  its  thought.     Are  they  to  be  praised 

or  blamed  for  it  ?      This    is  a  question  I  shall  not 

examine,  and  I  shall  confine  myself  to  saying  that,  in 

preaching  the  liberty  of  thought,  the  two  greatest  of 

them,  La  Fontaine  and  Moliere,  are  suspected  with 

good  reason  of  having  preached  the  liberty  of  morals. 

If  they  themselves  are   not  what  was  called   in   the 

language  of  the  time  "passionate   unbelievers" — and 

for  that  matter  are  they  not  this  ? — their  doctrine  has 

yet  always  this  against  it,  that  it  gave  the    passions 

full  play.      But  I  am  now  treating  the  question  only 

historically  ;  and,  whatever  may  be  thought  of  their 

influence,  we  are  concerned  for  the  moment  only  with 

determining   its  nature.      Now   the  naturalism   they 

represent  is  of  such  importance  in  the  history  of  ideas 

in    the   seventeenth    century,   since   it    balanced    the 

power  of  Jansenism,  and  did  not  work  in  the  same 

direction  as  Cartesianism,  that  it  is  to  be  considered  as 

a  third  current  which  must  be  carefully  distinguished 

from  the  other  two. 

If  we  have  seen  above  how  the  spirit  of  the  six- 
126 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

teenth  century  became  that  of  the  seventeenth,  we 
now  see  how  the  spirit  of  the  seventeenth  became  in 
its  turn  that  of  the  eighteenth.  This  I  shall  endeavour 
to  show  some  day  with  more  precision  and  clearness. 
But  in  the  meantime  it  is  sufficient  to  remember  that 
it  is  there  that  Voltaire  and  Diderot,  for  example, 
have  their  true  origin.  I  do  not  speak  of  Rousseau  ; 
Rousseau  comes  from  elsewhere ;  but  Voltaire  and 
Diderot  are  there  in  their  entirety.  Though  I  have 
already  pointed  this  out,  there  will  be  no  harm  in  re- 
peating it :  it  is  Pascal  that  Voltaire,  with  a  singular 
clearness  of  view,  attacked  first  of  all,  from  1728, 
and  it  is  first  of  all  against  the  Pensees^  or  against 
Jansenism,  that  he  renewed  the  combat  of  Tartufe  and 
the  Ecole  des  Femmes.  The  Jesuits  made  the  remark- 
able blunder  of  encouraging  him,  as  Louis  XIV  had 
formerly  encouraged  Moliere.  It  was  really  in  the 
name  of  respectability,  that  he  also,  Voltaire,  wrote 
in  his  Remarques  sur  les  Pensees  de  Pascal: 

"  Man  is  no  enigma,  as  you  make  him,  in  order 
that  you  may  have  the  pleasure  of  solving  it :  man 
seems  to  be  in  his  place  in  nature.  Superior  to  the 
animals,  whom  he  resembles  only  in  his  organs, 
inferior  to  other  beings,  whom  he  probably  resembles 
in  thought,  he  is,  like  everything  we  see,  a  mixture 
of  good  and  evil,  of  pleasure  and  pain  :  he  is  pro- 
vided with  passions  to  act,  and  reason  to  govern  his 
actions.  .  .  .     And  these  so-called  contrarieties  which 

you  call  *  contradictions '  are  the  necessary  ingredients 

127 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

for   the  composition  of  man,  who  is,  like  the  rest  of 
nature,  what  he  ought  to  he^     (Ed.   Beuchot,  xxxvii, 

P-  36.) 

Monere  had  not  said  anything  else  by  the  mouth 
of  the  reasonable  Philinte  of  the  Misanthrope:  "I 
take  men  calmly  just  as  they  are  ;  I  accustom  myself 
to  bear  with  what  they  do  ;  and  I  believe  that  at  the 
court,  as  well  as  in  the  city,  my  phlegm  is  as  philo- 
sophical as  your  bile." 

This  is  only  the  excuse  for  nature,  so  to  speak  ; 
it  is  not  the  apotheosis,  nor  the  religion  of  nature. 
Voltaire  in  many  respects  still  belongs  to  the  seven- 
teenth century,  and,  brought  up  as  he  was  in  Jansenism, 
he  believes  no  more  than  Molicre  in  the  goodness  of 
nature.  He  believes  only,  first  in  the  uselessness,  and 
then  in  the  cruelty  of  the  means  which  men 'have 
thought  upon  to  combat  nature,  and  which  end  only 
in  being  defeated.  But  Diderot  goes  further ;  he 
gives  a  prominence  to  this  religion  of  nature, 
which,  with  Voltaire  and  Moliere,  was  as  yet 
only  a  far  away  consequence  of  its  first  principle  ; 
and  he  does  so  much  more  openly  and  boldly  than 
Rousseau. 

"  Dost  thou  wish  to  know  on  every  occasion  " — says 

Orou  to  the  chaplain,  in  the  Supplement  au  Voyage  de 

Bougainville — "  dost  thou  wish  to  know  what  is  good 

and  what  is  bad  ?     Consider  the  nature  of  things  and 

actions,  thy  connections  with  thy  fellow-creatures,  the 

influence   of  thy  conduct  on  thy  personal  usefulness 

128 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

and  on  the  public  good.  Thou  art  mad  if  thou  dost 
believe  that  there  is  anything  abovey  below,  or  in  the 
universe,  which  can  add  to  or  take  away  from  the  laws 
of  nature.  Her  eternal  wish  is  that  the  good  Ise  pre- 
ferred to  the  evil,  and  the  public  good  to  the  private 
good.  Thou  shalt  order  the  contrary,  but  thou  shalt 
not  be  obeyed.  Thou  shalt  multiply  the  evil-doers 
and  the  unfortunate  by  fear,  punishnient,  and  remorse ; 
thou  shall  deprave  the  consciences,  thou  shall  corrupt  the 
minds.  Troubled  in  their  state  of  innocence,  tranquil 
in  their  crime,  they  will  have  lost  the  pole-star  on  their 
way.  Answer  me  sincerely  :  despite  the  express 
orders  of  thy  three  legislators — God,  the  priest,  and 
the  magistrate — does  a  young  man  in  thy  coimtry 
never  have  his  girl  without  their  permission?"  (Ed. 
Assezat  &  Tourneux,  ii.,  p.  198.) 

I  ask  pardon  for  this  last  line.  Obliged  as  we  believe 
ourselves  to  be,  when  we  cite  Diderot,  to  cite  always 
only  the  half  of  what  he  says,  we  have  as  a  result 
an  insufficient  knowledge  of  his  personality ;  and 
here,  in  particular,  I  rather  fear  the  true  bearing  of 
the  quotation  would  not  have  been  gathered,  had  I 
not  given  it  entirely. 

Characteristic   as    this    is  of    the    usual   form   of 

Diderot's  tendencies  when  he  moralises,  it  seems  to 

me  to  be  no  less  characteristic  of  the  consequences 

to  which  the  superstition  of  nature,  sooner  or  later, 

must   inevitably  lead.      Diderot  here  joins  Rabelais, 

and   his  dream  of  Otaiti  leads  us,  if  I  may  say  so, 

I 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

back  to  the  Abbey  of  Theleme.  Shaken  in  its 
foundations  by  the  paganism  of  the  Renaissance, 
of  which  Luther,  and  Calvin  above  all,  in  vain  en- 
deavoured to  stay  the  progress ;  compromised  and 
discredited  by  the  very  bitterness  of  the  theological 
quarrels  of  the  seventeenth  century ;  restored  for 
barely  fifty  years  by  the  Pascals,  Bossuets,  and 
Bourdaloues  to  its  early  dignity ;  attacked  on  all 
points,  simultaneously  or  successively,  by  the  liber- 
tines, by  the  philosophers  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  by  the  encyclopaedists,  Christianity  lost  the 
battle.  There  will  surely  be  no  cause  for  wonder — 
if  the  single  combat  of  Moliere  against  the  Pascals, 
Bossuets,  and  Bourdaloues  is  not  its  least  interesting 
episode — that  we  have  been  anxious  to  throw  light  on 
it,  and  that  we  have  dwelt  on  it  at  length. 

I  would  not  dare  to  say,  and  it  matters  little, 
whether  Moliere  foresaw  all  the  consequences  which 
were  yet  to  arise  from  his  doctrines.  Neither 
Voltaire  nor  Diderot  foresaw,  or  even  wished,  all 
that  has  been  done  since  their  time  under  the 
authority  of  their  name.  In  the  ardour  of  the 
fight,  enveloped  and  blinded  as  it  were  by  the  smoke 
of  the  battle-field,  we  can  hardly  measure  our 
blows,  much  less  judge  of  their  effects.  Perhaps, 
however,  it  is  the  peculiarity  of  genius  to  insinuate 
something  more  into  its  work  than  is  imagined. 
Talent,  which    knows   everything    it    does,  and    can 

account  for  it,  can  do  so  only  from  being  incapable 

130 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

of  stretching  its  view  beyond  the  horizon  of  its  time 
and  the  actual  bounds  of  its  experience.  But  genius 
is  really  the  power  of  anticipating  the  future  ;  and, 
from  age  to  age,  its  creations  do  not  change  on 
that  account,  as  is  sometimes  said,  in  nature  or  in 
meaning,  but  they  must  be  compared  with  those 
laws  whose  fruitful  formulae  include  even  unforeseen 
phenomena.  Nobody  will  dispute  me  the  right  of 
inscribing  Moliere  in  the  rank  and  number  of  men 
of  genius. 

In  any  case,  whether  or  not  he  was  conscious 
of  the  entire  bearing  of  his  work,  what  cannot  be 
doubted  is  that,  son  of  Montaigne  and  Rabelais, 
friend  of  Chapelle  and  La  Fontaine,  lover  of  Made- 
leine Bejart  and  husband  of  Armande,  nobody  was 
freer  in  thought  than  Moliere,  more  untied  in  every 
belief,  more  indifferent  in  matters  of  religion — or, 
from  that  very  reason,  more  aggressive,  at  a  time 
when  religion  Ifeft  nobody  the  liberty  of  indifference. 
This  might  well  have  been  granted  him,  since,  as  I 
have  endeavoured  to  show  above,  he  would  probably 
have  continued  to  attack  everything  in  religion  which 
tends  to  fetter  the  development  or  expansion  of  the 
natural  and  of  nature. 

His  work  thus  enters  into  history,  and  takes  its 
rightful  place  in  the  history  of  ideas.  The  general 
aspect  of  the  seventeenth  century  is  perceptibly 
modified.  The  false  unity  which  is  ascribed  to  it 
is    merely    apparent     and    superficial.       Epochs    are 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

to  be  distinguished  in  it,  and  parties  in  each 
of  these  epochs.  The  Cartesians  are  one  and  the 
Jansenists  another.  But  the  libertines  are  a  third, 
and  Moliere  is  their  most  illustrious  representa- 
tive. What  would  be  whispered,  so  to  speak, 
only  within  closed  doors,  amongst  accomplices, 
and  in  the  coteries  of  wits,  he  said  publicly,  with 
open  doors.  What  was  only  a  secret  or  reserved 
doctrine,  of  which  the  common  people  were  not 
yet  considered  capable,  he  taught  on  the  stage 
and  instilled  into  the  agents,  the  soldiers,  and  the 
lackeys  who  filled  the  pit.  So  what  was  only  a 
theory,  to  which  one  did  not  always  dare  to  con- 
form his  conduct,  he  made  a  doctrine  of  morality : 
a  doctrine  of  morality,  that  is  to  say  a  practice,  a 
rule  for  life. 

And  the  battle  was  warm,  the  fray  was  confused, 
with  now  a  loss,  and  now  a  gain.  The  Jansenists 
seemed  to  triumph  at  one  time,  and  the  Cartesians, 
at  one  time,  seemed  to  unite  with  the  Jansenists.  The 
same  Baillet  who  saw  so  clearly  in  Moliere  "  one  of 
the  most  dangerous  enemies  of  the  Church  "  is  the 
biographer  of  Descartes.  But  it  was  Moliere  who  won; 
his  Tartufe  changed  the  future  of  the  battle ;  and 
neither  piety,  nor  eloquence,  nor  even  genius  has  been 
able  to  re-establish  a  reputation  or  prosperity.  In 
this  respect  he  may  be  said  to  herald  the  doctrine  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  or  even  to  prepare  it.     He  broke 

to  some  extent  the  restraints  on  free-thought.     And 
132 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

as  we  pass  from  Rabelais  and  Montaigne  to  him  with- 
out a  hitch,  so  we  pass  quite  smoothly  from  him  to 
Voltaire  and  Diderot.  He  belongs  to  the  family;  and, 
not  to  trouble  with  a  comparison,  it  is  undoubtedly  he 
who  did  the  most  of  all,  were  it  only  by  the  superiority 
of  the  dramatic  form  for  spreading  the  ideas  of  which 
it  makes  itself  the  interpreter. 

Shall  I  say  that  he  is  the  greater  for  it  ?  No,  since 
it  has  been  kindly  pointed  out  to  me  that  it  is  in 
nobody's  power  to  '  lessen  '  or  *  magnify '  Moliere — 
which  means  nothing,  let  me  say,  unless  the  nega- 
tion of  all  criticism.  But  I  do  not  think  it  can  be 
a  matter  of  indifference  to  his  glory,  to  have  been, 
instead  of  a  simple  entertainer  or  a  clever  merry-andrew, 
a  thinker.  The  Ecole  des  Femmes^  or  Tartufe^  or  the 
Malade  imaginaire  are  not  works  which  can  be  emptied 
of  their  contents,  to  be  considered  only  in  their  form  : 
we  cannot  neglect  their  substance  and  attend  only  to 
their  style.  This  is  too  often  forgotten,  and  I  do  not 
wish  to  give  the  reasons  now — I  shall  give  them  only 
if  I  am  forced  to — but  all  the  same  this  is  too  often 
forgotten.  This  is  what  I  have  endeavoured  to  show. 
If,  in  addition,  I  have  been  able  to  point  out,  by  a 
notable  example,  how  disastrous  for  every  writer 
is  this  verbal  criticism,  which  attends  only  to  the 
manner  in  which  a  thing  is  said,  and  never  to  the 
thing  itself,  I  should  not  think  that  I  had  lost  either 
my  time  or  trouble  ;  and  I  hope  the  reader  will  agree 
with  me. 

133     . 


VOLTAIRE  AND  JEAN-JACQUES 
ROUSSEAU  * 

It  seems  an  advisable  and  even  a  humane  act  to 
begin  by  relieving  M.  Gaston  Maugras  of  a  certain 
uneasiness :  "  Although  researches,  crowned  w^ith 
success,"  says  he  in  his  preface,  "  and  the  extreme 
kindness  of  the  collectors  to  w^hom  we  have  applied, 
have  put  us  in  a  position  to  give  a  considerable  amount 
of  unpublished  material,  the  documents  which  appear 
in  this  volume  are  for  the  most  part  extracted  from 
the  letters  and  works  which  have  appeared  from  the  last 
century  to  the  present  day  "  ;  and  he  fears  the  reproach 
of  having  added  little  to  the  three  thousand  odd  letters^ 
which  we  should  have  of  Rousseau,  if  there  was  a  good 
edition  of  his  correspondence,  and  to  the  ten  thousand 
which  we  do  have  of  Voltaire.  Apparently  M.  Maugras 
thinks  that  everybody  has  read,  not  only  all  the  letters, 
but  also  all  the  works  of  Voltaire  and  Rousseau  ;  not 
only  all  their  works,  but  also  all  those  of  their  contem- 
poraries ;  and  has  not  only  read  them,  but  has  them 
all  in  vivid  recollection.  Let  him  be  undeceived 
and    reassured.      In   our   time   the    real   unpublished 

*  Sluerelki  de  philosofhes :  Voltaire  et  J. -J.  RousieaUf  par  M.  Gaston 
Maugras.     Paris,  1886  ;  Calmann  Levy. 


ESSAYS  IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

document,  according  to  the  famous  saying,  which  is 
even  more  true  than  witty,  is  precisely  what  is  printed. 
Only   those   then  will   find   fault   with    M.    Gaston 
Maugras  for  not  having  given  a  more  "  considerable 
amount  of  unpublished  material "  who  are  themselves 
ignorant  of  the    bibliography  of  the   subject  he  has 
treated.     Others  know  that  the  difficulty  in,  dealing 
with  Voltaire  and   Rousseau  is  not  to  give  or  find 
unpublished  material,  but  not  to  go  astray  or  lose  one- 
self altogether  among  the  printed  material,  for  even 
M.  Gaston  Maugras  himself  neither  knows  nor  dis- 
cusses it  all.     And  this  is  why  the  best  service  that 
can  be  done  us,  and  the  most  urgent,  is  to  put  a  little 
order  into  these  printed  works,  to  read  them  for  the 
instruction  of  those  who  have  not  the  time  to  read  them 
themselves,  to  assort  and  judge  and  criticise  them,  and 
to  use  them  for  the  composition  of  the  work  of  which 
they  are  only  the   material.      The   use   and  end  of 
rubble  is  not  to  block  up  the  public  way,  but  to  serve 
sooner  or  later  for  building  houses,  if  not  monuments. 
The   reader  would   be   surprised   were   I    here   to 
draw  up  a  list  of  the  works  we  have  on  the  history 
of  the   life  and   writings  of  Jean-Jacques  Rousseau. 
The  Genevans  in  particular — for    Rousseau  to  them 
is  not  merely  what  he  is  to  us,  but  something  more, 
a  compatriot,  the  great   man,  their  most   illustrious 
author  —  never    tire    of    editing    his    work,    and    of 
clearing  and  preparing   the  way  for  the  historian  of 
his   life.      The   people   of  Neuchatel,  who   are   the 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

trustees  of  his  papers,  are  no  less  arduous  in  the  same 
task.  And  in  France,  during  his  lifetime  and  even 
after  his  death,  Rousseau  played  too  great  a  part, 
attracted  too  much  of  the  attention  of  the  public, 
and  exercised  too  great  an  influence  in  every  v^^ay 
for  us  not  to  be  passionately  curious  of  all  that  con- 
cerns him.  No  doubt  we  are  as  curious,  and  for 
the  same  reasons,  of  all  that  concerns  Voltaire,  nor 
is  there  a  lack  of  works  on  the  history  of  his  life 
and  writings ;  but,  if  I  may  not  say  that  they  are 
less  numerous,  still  they  are  not  so  scattered,  and, 
though  not  final^  of  a  character  not  so  provisional. 
Further,  there  is  an  excellent  edition  and  good 
biographies  of  Voltaire,  but  there  are  none  yet  of 
Rousseau.  The  best  edition  we  have  is  of  no  value 
— the  edition  of  Musset-Pathay ;  and,  as  for  bio- 
graphies, neither  the  two  volumes  of  Saint-Marc 
Girardin  (1853),  nor  the  heavy  compilation  of  M. 
BrokerhoflF  (1863),  nor  the  brilliant  sketch  of  Mr. 
John  Morley  (1873)  is  all  that  is  to  be  desired. 
Who  can  say  that  it  is  not  the  very  abundance  of 
materials  which  discourages  the  historian  from  work- 
ing them  up  ?  But  who  can  fail  to  see,  consequently, 
that,  the  more  they  accumulate,  the  greater  the  need 
of  haste,  even  at  the  expense  of  being  obscure  or 
incomplete  in  certain  points,  to  turn  them  to  account 
as  far  as  possible  ?  Granted  that  the  time  is  not 
yet  come  to  build,  must  we  not  always  before  build- 
ing make  our  plans,  and  why  not  begin  ? 

136 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

Let  us  congratulate  M.  Maugras  on  having  had 
this  courage,  for  in  his  volume  on  Voltaire  et  'Jean- 
Jacques  Rousseau,  though  he  does  not  altogether 
fulfil  the  promise  of  the  title,  he  has  really  given 
us  a  sketch  of  a  history  of  Rousseau's  life,  or,  to  be 
quite  exact,  of  the  second  half  of  his  life — from  1755 
fo  1778.  So  I  shall  not  examine  if,  as  I  have  just 
been  urging,  and  as  would  need  to  be  insisted  upon  in 
other  circumstances,  any  brochures  or  newspaper  or 
review  articles  have  escaped  the  attention  of  M. 
Maugras,  if,  in  the  long  voyage  in  search  of  the 
unpublished,  he  has  been  diligent  enough  in  his  in- 
vestigation of  the  printed  matter,  if  he  should  not 
sometimes  have  followed  more  closely  and  discussed 
more  carefully  the  sayings  of  his  predecessors :  it 
is  sufficient  for  my  purpose  that  he  has  written  his 
book,  and  that  the  book  is  interesting.  But,  in  case 
he  should  return  to  his  sketch  to  correct  and  complete 
it,  and  thus  give  us  the  book  we  wish,  I  shall  con- 
tent myself  at  present  with  pointing  out  its  two  great 
faults  as  it  now  stands — it  is  not  sufficiently  impartial, 
and  the  composition  lacks  breadth  of  treatment. 

With  the  exception  of  BufFon  and  Montesquieu, 
our  great  men  of  the  eighteenth  century  were  rather 
unamiable  characters,  such  as  d'Alembert,  Grimm, 
Diderot ;  and  above  them  all,  undoubtedly  the  two 
greatest,  stood  Voltaire  and  Jean  -  Jacques,  two^ 
"  puissant  gods,"  two  shabby  fellows.  When  I  think 
of  the  one  I  always  prefer  the  other.     Voltaire  was 

137 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

more  perverse,  Jean- Jacques  was  more  suspicious  ; 
the  former  was  more  irritable,  the  latter  more  dan- 
gerous ;  scurrility  was  at  the  bottom  of  the  character 
of  the  one,  and  even  was  one  part  of  his  genius,  the 
other  was  never  better  inspired  than  by  defiance, 
envy,  or  hatred  :  and  though  nobody  could  safely 
be  the  enemy  of  Voltaire,  that  was  almost  better 
than  being  the  friend  of  Rousseau.  And  so,  if  I 
must  compare  them,  I  cannot  incline  more  to  the 
one  than  the  other,  and  much  less  can  I  join  with 
M.  Maugras  in  placing  all  right  and  moderation 
and  generosity  on  the  side  of  Voltaire,  and  all 
the  faults  on  the  side  of  Rousseau.  M.  Maugras 
is  too  forgetful  that  on  every  occasion,  and  without 
any  provocation,  only  because  the  success  of  their 
works  made  them  rivals  of  his  glory  and  popularity, 
Voltaire  attacked,  one  after  the  other,  the  least 
and  the  greatest  of  his  contemporaries :  Piron  and 
Freron,  Crebillon  and  Maupertuis,  BufFon  and 
Montesquieu.  "  He  seems  to  have  laid  the  scheme 
of  burying  all  his  contemporaries  during  his  life- 
time," said  BufFon ;  "  he  has  a  grudge  against 
every  pedestal,"  said  also  Diderot  ;  and  I  would 
willingly  add  that,  aristocrat  in  everything,  he  was 
truly  democratic  only  in  his  jealousy  of  all  that 
was  above  him.  After  the  success  of  the  Nouvelle 
Hilo'ise  and  the  notoriety  of  Emile,  in  vain  had 
Rousseau  been  the  friend  of  Voltaire,  and  Voltaire, 
under   the    pseudonym  of  M.    de   la    Roupilliere   or 

138 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

Le  R.  P.  I'Escarbotier,  would  have  jeered  at  it  no  less 
cruelly. 

So  partial  is  M.  Maugras  to  Voltaire,  that  not 
only  does  he  overlook  all  this,  but  even  goes  to 
the  other  extreme  of  holding  that  Voltaire  had  the 
right  to  see  a  direct  and  personal  attack  in  Rousseau's 
famous  Discourses^  as  in  his  Lettre  sur  les  Spectacles. 
For,  he  argues,  had  not  Voltaire  been  for  the  last 
thirty  years  the  support  of  those  theatres  which 
Rousseau  attacked,  just  as  he  was  "  the  most  sur- 
prising incarnation  of  the  civilisation,  the  arts,  and 
the  sciences  "  in  which  Rousseau  could  see  only  the 
ever  renewed  nourishment  of  human  corruption  ? 
M.  Maugras  is  surely  unwilling  to  grant  the  right 
of  having  other  ideas  on  the  theatre  than  those 
held  by  the  author  of  Zaire.  And  because  Vol- 
taire wished  to  establish  a  theatre  at  Geneva,  no 
Genevan  had  the  right  to  think  it  bad  !  It  is  the 
same,  too,  when  M.  Maugras  deals  with  Rousseau's 
well-known  letter  which  contains  his  challenge  to 
Voltaire  :  "  I  do  not  like  you  at  all,  sir  j  you  have  done 
me  the  most  painful  injuries  possible,  me  your  disciple 
and  enthusiast " ;  and  when  he  finds  it,  as  indeed  it 
is,  I  may  say  impertinent,  the  most  impertinent,  to 
use  Voltaire's  word,  which  fanatic  ever  scrawled.  But 
M.  Maugras  forgets  that  if  Rousseau,  throughout 
this  long  quarrel,  was  impertinent  in  his  letters  and 
fanatical  in  his  proceedings,  he  at  least  knew,  in 
his  public  writings,  how  to  keep  from  descending 
139 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

to  the  low  insults  which  Voltaire  heaped  upon  him, 
and  which  this  irritable  patriarch  did  not  cease  to 
spew  upon  him  even  to  the  last.  When  M.  Maugras 
retouches  his  book,  he  will  be  able  to  keep  his 
sympathies  for  Voltaire,  and  even  let  them  be  plainly 
evident ;  but  he  will  do  well  merely  to  ground  them 
better,  if  I  may  say  so,  and  to  strengthen  his  own 
case  by  being  more  just  to  Rousseau,  though  still 
preferring  Voltaire. 

I  should  also  have  liked  if  M.  Maugras,  without 
any  essential  change  in  the  plan  of  the  book,  had 
not  put  out  of  court,  as  he  says,  the  talent  and 
the  genius  of  Voltaire  and  Rousseau,  so  as  to 
study  only  their  character.  Speaking  generally,  I 
really  do  not  understand  how  anyone  can  dis- 
tinguish, separate,  and  in  fact  dissociate  what 
nature  has  meant  to  be  so  closely  united — the 
talent,  the  genius,  and  the  character  of  a  great 
writer.  But  when  we  are  concerned  with  a  man 
who,  like  Voltaire,  paints  himself  so  true  to  life, 
unintentionally  and  unwittingly,  in  ten  lines,  or  of 
a  man  who,  like  Rousseau,  passed  the  one  half  of 
his  life  only  in  telling  us  about  the  other,  I  admit 
I  cannot  understand  it  at  all.  This  is  the  gravest 
fault  in  M.  Maugras's  book.  His  study  of  the 
mere  character  of  Voltaire  and  Rousseau  tempted 
me  while  I  read  it  to  repeat  the  saying  which  is 
attributed   to  M.   de  Castries,  at   the   very  time  of 

the  great  quarrel  of  Rousseau  and  Diderot.     "This 

140 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

is  absurd,"  he  said ;  "  why,  these  people  are  the 
only  thing  spoken  about,  people  of  no  position,  who 
have  no  house,  and  are  lodged  in  a  garret :  we 
can't  put  up  with  this."  And  indeed,  if  Voltaire 
and  Rousseau  were  not  known  otherwise,  we  neither 
do  nor  may  see  any  reasons  why  we  should  interest 
ourselves  in  their  quarrel,  nor  for  M.  Maugras 
himself  to  take  such  a  great  interest  in  it.  Who 
are  these  people  ?  What  have  they  to  do  with  us  ? 
What  does  it  matter  whether  they  agree  or  pitch 
into  each  other  ?  And  since  it  is  evident  that  they 
did  quarrel,  what  business  of  ours  is  it  to  examine 
so  carefully  who  was  the  first  to  begin  ?  M.  Mau- 
gras assuredly  knows  why.  He  could  tell  us. 
Perhaps  he  thinks  he  has  reasons  for  not  telling 
us.  But  all  the  same  he  has  not  done  so.  And 
I  am  sorry  for  it,  for  had  he  tried  to  tell  us,  he 
would  have  seen  that  there  was  something  more 
than  the  meeting  or  collision  of  two  adverse  vanities. 
Not  that  in  my  turn  I  wish  to  abstract  Voltaire 
and  Rousseau,  of  all  people,  from  their  human  char- 
acteristics, to  make  them  pure  spirits  that  can  be 
separated  only  by  their  way  of  understanding  liberty, 
progress,  and  justice.  God  forbid  !  this  would  be 
erring  in  the  other  extreme.  Many  paltry  reasons 
helped  on  their  quarrel,  these  vulgar  and  lamentable 
reasons  which  could  as  well  provoke  two  door-porters. 
For  example,  if  Rousseau  was  not  exactly  jealous  of 

Voltaire's  fortune,  his  estates  and  his  income,  he  cer- 
141 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

tainly  was  jealous  of  the  show  and  security  of  his 
social  position,  and  if  not  of  his  money,  at  least  of 
the  consideration  Voltaire  owed  to  his  money.  And 
what  Voltaire,  on  his  part,  could  not  put  up  with,  was 
to  be  compared,  he,  the  gentleman  in  ordinary  of  the 
chamber,  the  table-companion  of  kings,  the  friend  of 
the  mistresses  and  empresses,  with  this  little  Genevan, 
this  "  clockmaker's  boy,"  as  he  calls  him,  without 
money,  position,  and  society.  We  know  the  tone 
in  which  he  reproached  the  other  Rousseau,  Jean- 
Baptiste,  with  being  the  son  of  a  bootmaker. 

Adroitly  and  maliciously  M.  Maugras  shows  up 
these  paltry  reasons.  Thus,  on  the  side  of  Jean- 
Jacques,  one  of  these  was  the  installation  of  Voltaire 
at  the  gates  of  Geneva.  This  intriguer  had  taken 
his  place  from  him.  In  this  town,  to  which  the 
"  citizen "  counted  on  returning  in  triumph,  a 
master  of  witticisms  irrecoverably  filched  from  him 
all  hopes  of  popularity.  "You  have  alienated  my 
fellow- citizens  from  me,"  he  wrote,  "you  will 
make  me  die  in  a  foreign  land,  while  all  the  honours 
that  a  man  can  expect  will  accompany  you  into  my 
country."  There  is  the  arrow,  and  there  the  wound  ! 
Reciprocally,  on  the  side  of  Voltaire  is  the  influence 
which  Rousseau  continues  to  exercise  on  the  preachers 
of  Protestantism.  He  is  worried  in  his  pleasures  :  he 
is  not  allowed  to  recruit  actors  for  his  theatre  among 
the  youth  of  Geneva :    "  The  priests  of  Geneva  are 

joined  in  horrible  faction  against  comedy.     I  shall  have 

142 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

the  first  socinian  priest  who  passes  on  my  territory 
shot.  Jean-Jacques  is  a  *jean  f.  .  .'  who  writes  every 
fortnight  to  these  priests  to  enflame  them  against 
plays."  His  letters  to  d'Argental,  d'Alembert,  and 
Damilaville  are  full  of  this  sort  of  complaint.  But 
these  are  not  the  only  reasons,  either  on  one  side 
or  the  other,  and  certainly  not  the  truest  ones,  as 
M.  Maugras  seems  to  think.  And  if  Rousseau's 
persuasion  that  the  burning  of  Emile  at  Geneva  was 
due  only  to  Voltaire,  and  Voltaire's  indignation  on 
hearing  of  the  underhand  methods  of  which  Rousseau 
accused  him,  are  stronger  reasons,  I  should  like  still 
stronger  and  deeper  reasons,  and  these  there  are. 

When  there  appeared,  one  after  the  other,  in  less 
than  ten  years,  from  1755  to  1764,  the  Di scours 
sur  Vlnegalite^  the  Lettre  a  d' Alembert^  the  Nouvelle 
Heloise^  the  Contrat  social^  Emile^  the  Lettre  a  Chris- 
tophe  de  Beaumont,  the  Lettres  de  la  Montagne,  it  was 
impossible  for  Voltaire,  in  the  first  place,  not  to  see 
that  this  newcomer  was  robbing  him  of  a  portion  of 
the  empire  of  opinion.  And  if  for  that  matter  he 
could  have  made  any  mistake  about  it,  circumstances 
would  not  have  been  long  in  opening  his  eyes.  We 
must,  indeed,  remember  that,  before  Emile  and  the 
Nouvelle  Helo'ise,  there  had  not  been  a  case  for  a  very 
long  time  of  a  success  so  sudden,  universal,  and  con- 
tagious as  that  of  Rousseau.  Other  works,  like  his, 
had  been  raised  above  the  clouds,  according  to  the 
expression  of  the  time,  but  none  yet  had  gone  so  far 

H3 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

or  sunk  so  deep  ;  neither  the  Steele  de  Louis  XIV^  nor 

the  Esprit  des  Lois^  nor  the  Lettres  philosophiques^  nor 

the  Lettres  persanes.     Even  at  the  theatre  this  fever 

of  enthusiasm  and  delirium  of  admiration  was  hardly 

known.     It  seemed  as  if  the  eloquence  of  this  orator 

had  struck  at  the  bottom  of  their  hearts  a  chord  which 

nobody  before  had   ever   been   able   to  touch,  while 

among  the  crowd  it  awoke  passions  which  were  still 

unknown.     The  very  nature   of  their  success,   and 

this  has  not  been   sufficiently  dwelt  upon,  was  not 

the  least  new  thing  in  Emile  and  the  Nouvelle  Helo'ise. 

In  vain  did  Voltaire,  in  his  letter  to  the  Marquis  de 

Ximenes,  endeavour  to  turn  the  novel  to  ridicule,  its 

Saint-Preux  and  Julie  d'Etange,  Wolmar  and    Lord 

Bomston.     In  vain,  though  from  a  determination  not 

to  be  surpassed,  as  Condorcet  tells  us,  did  he  oppose 

his  Sermon  des  Cinquante  to  the  Profession  de  foi  du 

Vicaire  Savoyard.     It  came  to    nothing ;    he   lost  all 

the  trouble  of  his  witticisms  and  impiety.     Popular 

opinion    was   escaping    him,    and    just    at    the    very 

moment  when  he  thought  he  was  master  of  it,  when 

the  encyclopaedists  in  body  affected  to  follow  at  his 

heels,  when  he  had  just  seen  the  death  of  Fontenelle 

and  Montesquieu  :  and  he  had  passed  his  sixty-fifth 

year  !     I  have  sometimes  asked  myself  what  would 

have  become  of  Voltaire's  kingship,  had  it  not  been 

for  a  Calas  and  a  Sirven  ;  and  I  cannot  think  he  was 

so  simple,  when  he  saw  the  success  of  Rousseau,  as 

not  to  have  asked  the  same  question  himself. 

144 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

The  causes  of  this  success  have  been  sought  for 
everywhere  more  or  less,  and  literary  causes  have 
usually  been  urged — the  novelty  of  Rousseau's  lan- 
guage, the  character  of  his  eloquence,  sensibility, 
passion,  and  nature  all  making  their  way  at  last 
through  or  over  the  debris  of  old  convention.  All 
the  forms  of  literature  were  exhausted :  tragedy, 
comedy,  eloquence,  and  even  history  languished  in 
the  imitation  of  the  classic  models ;  the  novel  of 
Prevost  and  the  drama  of  Diderot  had  just  appeared  ; 
lyric  poetry  was  not  yet  in  existence  ;  the  century 
was  growing  weary,  in  spite  of  the  Encyclopadia^  with 
the  epigrams  of  Piron,  the  little  verses  of  Bernis,  and 
the  nasty  wit  of  the  younger  Crebillon.  Rousseau 
came  and  changed  all.  Free  from  the  prejudices 
which  weighed  on  the  majority  of  men  of  letters, 
he  dared  to  be  himself;  and,  as  he  was  Rousseau, 
this  meant  a  revolution.  Now  this  revolution  began 
by  overturning  all  that  Voltaire  had,  For  almost 
half  a  century,  believed,  said,  and  taught ;  if  it 
should  chance  to  succeed,  it  would  convince  him  of 
the  error  of  his  criticism  and  the  sterility  even  of 
its  aim.  Conservative  in  everything,  as  has  been  so 
well  said,  except  in  religion,  not  only  had  Voltaire 
submitted  with  docility  to  the  fetters  of  tradition, 
but  he  had  glorified  them,  and,  in  a  certain  sense,  he 
had  written  his  Siecle  de  Louis  XI F  only  to  raise 
the  respect  for  them  to  the  height  of  a  dogma. 
According  to  him  the  only  forms  which  should    be 

K 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

cultivated  were  those  practised  by  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  since  neither  Corneille  nor  Moliere  had 
written  novels,  but  only  people  like  Courtilz  de  Sandras 
and  the  Comtesse  d'Aulnoy,  the  novel  was  fit  only  for 
the  amusement  of  children  and  women.  "If  some 
novels  still  appear,  true  men  of  letters  despise  them." 
He  was  of  opinion  that  certain  subjects  were  unworthy 
of  being  treated  by  art,  and  as  Racine  had  never  put  on 
the  stage  the  love  of  a  tutor  for  his  pupil,  the  Nouvelle 
HHo'ise  for  that  one  reason  could  be  only  a  rhapsody. 
And  believing  further  that  there  were  rules,  or  rather 
fixed  formulae,  for  the  art  of  writing,  at  once  invari- 
able and  rigid,  he  held  that  whoever  did  not  write 
according  to  the  rigour  of  these  rules  wrote  badly, 
in  a  style  less  French  than  Swiss,  or  rather  Iroquois. 
"  Elegance  of  style  is  so  necessary  that  without  it  the 
beauty  of  the  sentiments  is  lost.'* 

Such  being  his  ideas,  Voltaire  could  no  more 
approve  the  form  than  the  substance  of  those  of 
Rousseau,  nor  his  novels,  nor  his  Discourses^  and  still 
less  could  he  like  them  :  and  if  these  two  men  were 
in  accord  in  every  other  point,  would  their  views  on 
the  art  of  writing  alone  have  been  sufficient  to  divide 
them  ?  The  elder  Corneille  in  the  preceding  century 
was  no  more  astonished  or  scandalised  at  the  success 
of  the  tragedies  of  Racine,  than  was  Voltaire  at 
the  success  of  the  writings  of  the  citizen  of  Geneva. 
It  really  seemed  to  the  author  of  'Loire  and  the  Siecle 

de  Louis   XI F  that    a    barbarian   was   entering   as   a 
146 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

conquerer  into  the  domain  which  it  had  taken  him 
fifty  years  to  win,  was  disputing  the  territory  over 
which  Freron  and  even  Desfontaines  had  recently 
recognised  his  empire,  and  was  devastating  the  heritage 
he  believed  he  had  received  directly  from  the  men  of 
the  great  century.  And  it  must  to  his  honour  be 
said,  that,  if  the  success  of  Rousseau  had  perhaps 
wounded  him  at  first  in  his  vanity  of  fashionable 
author,  what  he  defended,  what  he  wished  to  defend, 
what  he  thought  he  did  defend,  against  the  author 
of  Emlle  and  the  Hilo'ise^  was  the  cause  of  letters 
and  taste,  of  science  and  art,  the  cause  of  culture 
and  good-breeding — the  cause  of  progress  even  and 
civilisation. 

I  have  purposely  endeavoured  to  enlarge  on  this, 
for  indeed  there  were  other  matters  of  dispute  between 
Voltaire  and  Rousseau  than  belles-lettres  and  good  taste. 
In  1760  the  century  had  not  yet  shown  its  bias, 
and  the  question  was  to  know  which  of  the  two 
would  determine  it — the  citizen  of  Geneva  or  the  lord 
of  Tournay.  How  can  it  have  happened  that  M. 
Maugras,  and  so  many  others,  have  failed  to  note  this 
simple  point  ?  Though  statistics  and  chronology 
are  often  useless,  they  are  not  so  always.  In  the 
edition  of  Beuchot,  the  MHanges  of  Voltaire,  which 
contain  all  his  stray  tracts,  fill  no  less  than  fourteen 
volumes,  of  which  only  four  are  made  up  of  pieces 
anterior  to  1760.  Add  to  these  the  seven  volumes 
of  the  Dictionnaire  philosophiquey  of  which  the  first 
147 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

edition  appeared  only  in  1764,  and  we  have  seventeen 
volumes,  or  a  little  more,  which  contain  the  polemical 
work  of  the  patriarch  almost  in  its  entirety.  Voltaire 
was  not  a  "  philosopher  "  to  begin  with,  but  for  a  very 
long  time  a  wit,  and  nothing  but  a  wit.  For  Mon- 
tesquieu, for  example,  who  died  in  1755,  he  was  still 
only  that.  It  was  in  the  last  twenty  years  of  his 
long  life  that  he  became  the  man  of  his  century,  the 
apostle  of  tolerance  and  the  trumpet  of  incredulity. 
And  if  we  remember  in  this  connection  Condorcet's 
note  to  the  Sermon  des  Cinquante^  which  tells  us  that 
Voltaire,  "  a  little  jealous  of  the  courage  of  Rousseau," 
composed  this  work  only  in  reply  to  the  Profession 
de  foi  du  Vicaire  Savoyard^  we  can  conclude  from  all 
these  circumstances  that  Rousseau,  without  knowing 
it,  was  the  instrument,  or  even  the  worker  of  the 
last  transformation  of  Voltaire.  In  the  measure  that 
Rousseau  developed  his  principles,  Voltaire  opposed  to 
them  his — so  different  and  so  contradictory,  that  to 
reconcile  these  two  doctrines  and  these  two  men,  as  has 
sometimes  been  attempted,  in  a  common  apotheosis, 
needs  nothing  less,  in  fact,  than  a  ridiculous  ignorance 
on  our  part  of  their  doctrines  and  of  themselves,  of 
their  works  and  of  their  life,  of  the  eighteenth  century 
and  of  ourselves.  This  is  what  is  now  called  liberalism, 
width  and  breadth  of  mind  :  I  call  it  indifference, 
when  it  is  not  stupidity.  When  we  have  mated  the 
grand  Turk  to  the  republic  of  Venice,  we  shall  then 

be  able  to  reconcile  Voltaire  and  Rousseau. 
148 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

Never,  indeed,  was  there  a  clearer  opposition  or  a 
more  formal  contradiction.     Remove  the  priesthood 
and  establish  liberty  of  speech,  but  let  there  be,  none 
the  less,  for  the  rabble,  vi^ho  otherwise  would  be  too 
prone  to  dishonesty,  a  "rewarding  and  revengeful" 
God  :    this   is  all    the  social  philosophy  of  Voltaire, 
and  his  ideal  is  never  higher.     Of  a  nature  indifferent, 
or  rather  a  stranger  to  the  notion  of  moral  good  or 
evil,  he  held  that  honesty  consists  only  in  the  observa- 
tion of  social  usages,  just  as  virtue  even  consists  only 
in  obedience  to  certain  universal  and  necessary  "  pre- 
judices."    Or  farther,  to  make  the  largest  allowance 
possible  for  what  is  just  and  salutary  in  his  concep- 
tion, the  social  plan  is  such  a  fine  thing  in  his  eyes, 
that  man  cannot  have  other  obligation  or  law  than  to 
work  to  maintain  and  perfect  it.     Everything  is  praise- 
worthy which  tends  to  this  end,  nothing  is  dangerous 
but  that  which  deviates  from  it.     And  if  it  is  true, 
as  certain  philosophers,  and  Helvetius  among  others, 
have    held,   that    public    prosperity  sometimes    results 
from  the  concourse   of  the  vices   of  individuals,  we 
must  change  the  name  and  call  these  vices  virtues. 
Rousseau  is  not  so  easily  satisfied.     Uncertain  and 
wavering,  his  doctrine  of  morality  is  of  his  time  ;  but 
he  has  a  doctrine  of  morality,  and  it  is  a  morality,  a  rule 
we  may  say,  which  is  founded  on  a  certain  idea  of  a 
justice  anterior,  exterior,  and  superior  to  the  social  plan. 
Even  when  he  perverts  its  principles,  when,  with  his 

unfortunate  sophistry,  instead  of  submitting  his  passions 

149 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

to  the  rule,  he  endeavours  to  bend  the  rule  to  his 
passions,  Rousseau  does  not  for  all  that  cease  to  be 
moral,  since  he  is  ever  trying  to  realise  the  agreement  of 
his  conduct  with  his  principles.  And,  before  admiring 
the  social  plan  in  the  refinements  of  civilisation  and 
luxury,  he  asks  himself  what  has  it  done,  what  is  it 
doing,  to  establish  among  men  the  reign  of  justice 
and  right.  This  is  the  true  sign  of  an  eminently 
moral  nature. 

Though  he  deceived  himself  in  the  search  of  this 
very  rule,  though  in  founding  it  on  sentiment  he 
betrayed  it  to  the  mercy  of  individual  caprice,  though 
he  committed  a  dangerous  error  in  endeavouring  to 
lead  man  back  to  nature  as  the  source  of  all  justice, 
and  though,  in  attacking  immoderately  the  civilisation 
of  his  time,  he,  in  his  turn,  despised  the  grandeur  of 
its  accomplished  work, — all  this  may  be  true,  all 
this  is  true,  yet  this  does  not  concern  us  here, 
for  the  question  is  not  the  value  but  only  the  nature 
of  the  ideal  of  Rousseau.  I  ask  if  there  is  another 
more  radically  different  from  that  of  Voltaire  ?  As 
much  as  Voltaire's  is  tightly  bound  to  the  main- 
tenance of  civilisation,  so  much  is  Rousseau's  bound 
to  the  overthrow  of  this  very  civilisation.  According 
to  Voltaire,  man  becomes  more  and  more  perfect  in 
proportion  as  he  gets  further  away  from  the  state 
of  nature  j  according  to  Rousseau,  on  the  other  hand, 
as  he  comes  nearer  it.     The  same  epochs  which  for 

the  one  mark  the  progress  of  humanity  are  for  the 
ISO 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

other  epochs  of  the  aggravation  of  injustice  and 
inequality.  So  let  us  be  surprised  that  Voltaire  and 
Rousseau  did  not  agree,  and  agreed  even  less  the 
better  they  were  capable  of  understanding  each  other. 
These  observations  may  help  to  solve  a  question 
which  has  been  too  often  discussed.  If  we  are  to 
believe  that  hypocritical  old  fellow  Marmontel,  when 
the  Academy  of  Dijon  in  1749  propounded  the  well- 
known  subject — "  Have  the  arts  and  sciences  contri- 
buted to  purify  morals  ?  "  Rousseau  was  going  to  treat 
it  in  the  affirmative,  had  not  Diderot  observed  that  it 
was  the  pons  asinoruniy  to  which,  all  the  mediocre  talents 
were  taking  the  road.  Rousseau  has  given  another 
account  of  it  in  his  Confessions^  and  does  himself 
honour  in  his  choice.  However,  M.  Maugras,  with- 
out adducing  any  other  reason,  decides  in  a  few  words 
that  "  the  version  which  Marmontel  had  from  Diderot 
himself  seems  liker  the  truth."  Shall  I  tell  him  that 
the  version  of  Diderot  is  not  in  the  Memoirs  of  Mar- 
montel, but  really  in  the  Essai  sur  les  Regnes  de  Claude 
et  de  Neron^  by  Denis  Diderot  himself,  that  it  differs 
greatly  from  what  we  are  here  given,  and,  though 
not  identical  in  all  points  with  that  of  Rousseau,  can 
yet  be  more  easily  reconciled  with  the  Confessions  than 
with  the  version  of  Marmontel's  Memoirs  ?  But  I 
shall  rather  tell  him  that  Jean- Jacques,  being  what 
he  was,  would  not  have  thought  merely  of  treating 
the  question,  if  he  ought  to  have  treated  it  otherwise 
than  he  did,  and  that,  as  I  have  already  hinted  at  the 
151 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

reason,  we  shall  see  it  much  more  clearly  imme- 
diately. I  fear  M.  Maugras  has  not  always  under- 
stood Rousseau  very  well. 

It  is  the  same  when  he  asks  why  "  the  man  who 
passed  his  life  in  complaining  of  his  lot,  in  condemn- 
ing and  criticising  everything,"  should  have  thought 
fit  to  uphold  against  Voltaire  the  cause  of  Pro- 
vidence, which  had,  indeed,  been  tolerably  abused  in 
his  poem  Le  Desastre  de  Lisbonne.  The  reply,  how- 
ever, is  simple  enough,  and  "  the  man  "  has  given  it 
himself.  For  Rousseau  criticises  and  condemns  only 
the  evils,  or  the  causes  of  the  evils,  which  civilisation 
has  introduced  into  the  works  of  Providence,  and  has 
need  of  the  existence  of  Providence  as  a  guarantee  for 
the  hope  he  entertains  of  seeing  the  disappearance 
some  day  of  these  evils  and  their  causes.  His  reason- 
ing is  that  of  theologians  who  hold  that  sin  does  not 
consist  in  the  use  of  things  which  are  by  nature  bad, 
since  God  did  not  make  such  things^  but  in  the  bad  use 
of  good  things.  Similarly,  according  to  Rousseau,  we 
lack  no  reasons  for  complaint,  and  if  we  did,  he  would 
undertake  to  furnish  us  with  them  ;  but  it  is  in  us 
that  arise  so  many  evils,  and  not  in  nature,  and  still 
less  in  Providence — in  us  and  the  inner  vice  of  the 
social  organisation.  Only  change  the  conditions  of 
the  compact,  give  up  man  to  himself,  re-establish 
nature  in  the  purity  of  her  primitive  institution,  and 
all  will  be  well,  since  all  was  well  on  leaving  the 
hands  of  its  author,  and  has  degenerated  only  in  the 

152 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

hands  of  men.  M.  Maugras  has  not  seen  that  by 
depriving  Rousseau's  system  of  the  dogma  of  Pro- 
vidence, he  deprived  it  of  its  keystone,  and  left  not  a 
stone  standing  of  the  fragile,  it  may  be,  but  grandiose 
edifice. 

To  all  these  reasons,  literary  and  moral,  of  the 
opposition  and  division  of  the  author  of  Entile  and 
that  of  Candide,  it  is  now  time  to  add  this  last  one  : 
Voltaire  is  an  aristocrat  if  ever  there  was  one,  but  with 
Rousseau  the  plebeian  enters  for  the  first  time  into  the 
history  of  literature.  That  the  citizen  of  Geneva  was 
born  of  a  bourgeois  family  is  of  no  importance  :  the 
adventures  of  his  unfortunate  youth  soon  lost  him 
his  social  standing.  The  fact  is  that  Rousseau  knew 
what  misfortune  was,  since  he  notes  in  his  Confessions 
the  day  when  he  ceased  to  feel  hunger,  and  since, 
moreover,  it  has  been  possible  to  hold  that  the  distress 
of  his  last  years  led  him  to  suicide.  I  do  not  mention 
this  to  excuse  him  ;  but  this  cannot  be  forgotten  when 
it  is  maintained  that  the  passage  of  the  same  Lettre 
sur  la  Providence^  where  he  compares  his  poverty  with 
the  ostentatious  abundance  of  Voltaire,  is  only  a  figure 
of  rhetoric.  And  just  as  he  knew  misfortune,  he  knew 
the  unfortunate.  Voltaire  never  knew  what  passes  in 
the  soul  of  a  peasant,  of  a  man  of  the  people,  of  a 
lackey,  of  the  daughter  of  an  inn,  nor  the  angers 
and  hatreds  they  ruminate  in  silence,  nor  their  stifled 
grumblings  against  a  social  order,  of  which  their 
shoulders,   if  not    their    understandings,    would   still 

153 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

feel  that  they  alone  were  carrying  the  whole 
weight.  Rousseau  knew  it,  and  knew  it  by  experi- 
ence, and  did  not  speak  of  it — he  would  rather  have 
hidden  it  if  he  could  —  but  all  these  grudges  passed 
into  and  swelled  the  torrent  of  his  eloquence.  And 
no  more  did  Voltaire  speak  of  it,  but  he  felt  it,  and 
felt,  too,  that  there  was  something  else  underneath 
it  all  than  mere  rhetoric,  and  that  it  was  a  declara- 
tion of  war. 

This  is  the  true  secret  of  his  animosity,  as  it  is  also 
the  meaning  of  the  power  of  Rousseau.  In  the  old 
society,  till  the  time  of  Rousseau,  however  low  a  man's 
origin,  he  took  his  place  on  becoming  a  man  of  letters  ; 
he  passed  from  his  condition  into  another  ;  far  from 
being  proud  of  his  origin,  he  sought  to  efface  all 
traces  of  it ;  with  his  new  condition  he  assumed  new 
sentiments.  Rousseau  was  the  first  to  remain  a  man 
of  the  people  on  becoming  author,  and  to  found  his 
popularity  on  the  disdain  he  insolently  avowed  of 
everything  he  was  not  himself.  For  his  pride  even, 
whose  nature  has  been  so  often  misunderstood,  is  not 
the  pride  of  a  man  of  letters  or  a  wit,  but  it  is  rather 
the  pride  of  a  plebeian,  the  pride  of  a  self-made  man 
who  wishes  to  remember  his  beginnings  but  will  on 
no  account  be  reminded  of  them.  Has  this  character- 
istic of  Rousseau  been  brought  into  sufficient  pro- 
minence ?  Has  he  not  been  studied  too  exclusively — 
for  with  men  of  letters  we  usually  dwell  at  length  on 
their   origin,  family,  and   education — for   this   to   be 

154 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

taken  into  account.  These  are  questions  which  I  do 
not  intend  to  examine  now,  and  I  shall  be  satisfied  if 
what  I  have  endeavoured  to  show  is  evident,  that,  if 
the  great  lords  and  fine  ladies,  the  Prince  de  Conti  or 
the  Marechale  de  Luxembourg,  did  not  recognise 
what  this  plebeian  brought  them  in  his  books,  the 
more  aristocratic  and  intelligent  Voltaire  saw  it  clearly. 
A  new  type  of  man  was  appearing  on  the  scene,  and 
his  first  exercise  of  power  was  to  be  to  overthrow,  as 
soon  as  he  could,  all  that  Voltaire  had  loved. 

Are  we  to  hold  with  Rousseau  that  Voltaire  per- 
secuted him,  made  plans  against  him,  denounced 
him  to  the  rigours  of  the  government  of  Geneva  ? 
On  this  subject  may  be  read  some  of  M.  Maugras's 
best  chapters.  But  Genevans  will  pardon  me,  I  hope, 
if  I  dispense  with  recounting  their  intestine  quarrels 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  though  that  would  be 
necessary  for  a  thorough  study  of  the  question.  1 
admit  then  that  Voltaire,  throughout  the  whole  afiair, 
pursued  Rousseau  only  with  sarcasm  and  calumny  ;  and 
my  great  reason  for  this  is  that  he  was  not  in  a  position 
to  damage  him  otherwise  than  by  words.  For  as  to 
his  protestations  of  innocence,  we  know  what  they 
were ;  and  M.  Maugras  in  general  seems  to  put  too 
much  faith  in  them.  Nobody  in  the  world  ever  lied 
like  Voltaire.  When  he  published  against  Rousseau 
that  Lettre  au  Docteur  Pansophe  which  Beuchot  did  not 
think  he  needed  to  insert  in  his  edition  of  Voltaire's 
works,  but  which  is  none  the  less  by  the  patriarch, 

155 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

not  content  with  disowning  it,  did  he  not  himself 
attribute  it,  first  to  the  Abbe  Coyer,  and  then  to  Bordes 
(of  Lyons),  both  of  whom  were  living,  and  both  of. 
whom  were  thus  exposed  to  the  reprisals  of  Rousseau's 
Confessions  f  These  were  his  smallest  tricks.  To  the 
pleasure  of  injuring  people  he  added  that  of  misleading 
their  suspicions — "  with  his  usual  candour."  But,  what- 
ever may  be  the  real  state  of  affairs,  since  neither  he 
nor  Rousseau  was  burned  or  hanged,  let  us  admit  that 
Rousseau  is  wrong  when  "he  poses  as  the  victim  of 
Voltaire's  intrigues,"  and  let  us  acknowledge  that  M. 
Maugras  has  proved  "  the  innocence  of  the  patriarch." 

It  does  not  follow  all  the  same  that  Rousseau  was 
not  the  victim'  of  any  persecution,  and  we  need  not, 
like  M.  Maugras,  find  in  the  story  of  the  Confessions 
only  the  ravings  of  a  sick  man.  No  more  am  I  very 
sure  of  the  veracity  of  the  Confessions.  I  believe  he 
often  lied,  and,  if  need  be,  I  would  nerve  myself  to 
show  the  falsehood  or  error  of  more  than  one  point 
which  his  enthusiasts  have  accepted  as  certain.  But 
I  desire  justice.  Rousseau's  testimony. is  not  received 
in  his  own  cause,  and  when,  as  was  said,  it  makes 
for  him  ;  why  is  it  received  when  it  makes  against 
him  ? 

What   would   we    now    know    of    the   youth    of 

Rousseau,  of  some  of  the  saddest  adventures  of  his  life, 

if  he  himself,  in  his  Confessions,  had  not  thought  it  his 

duty  to  tell  us  them.     Yet  all  these  adventures  form 

part  of  his  history,  and,  far   from  contesting   them, 

156 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

nobody  ever  thinks  of  discussing  them.  But  what 
then  means  this  strange  obstinacy  of  finding  him  at 
fault  on  Voltaire,  Diderot,  Grimm,  and  Madame 
d'Epinay  ?  Were  the  Memoirs  of  Madame  d'Epinay, 
for  example,  the  declamations  of  Diderot  in  his  Essai 
sur  les  Regnes  de  Claude  et  de  Nhon^  and  so  many 
other  writings,  not  just  composed  in  answer  to  the 
Confessions^  and  why  are  they,  a  priori^  of  superior 
credit  than  the  Confessions  themselves  ?  The  Confes- 
sions are  believed,  and  we  would  be  loth  not  to  believe 
them,  when  they  admit  Rousseau's  fault  or  crime, 
but  they  are  not  believed  when  they  contain  his  excuse 
or  justification  ;  they  are  the  cry  of  the  sinner  against 
himself  when  he  accuses  himself,  but  they  are  the  work 
of  his  madness  and  the  monument  of  his  folly  when  he 
dares  to  attack  a  Grimm  or  Diderot.  But  are  these 
people  gods  to  us,  who  must  not  be  touched  ?  It  is 
surely  enough  that  they  are  so  for  their  editors.  I 
place  them  all  in  the  same  rank,  and,  if  I  must  choose 
between  them,  I  shall  still  prefer  Rousseau. 

As  to  the  matter  of  the  persecution,  it  is  merely  a 
question  of  understanding,  and,  for  understanding, 
merely  a  question  of  distinguishing.  Assuredly,  no 
more  than  Voltaire,  did  Diderot,  or  d'Alembert,  or 
Grimm,  and  still  less  M.  de  Malesherbes,  or  Madame 
de  Luxembourg  "conspire"  against  Rousseau.  In 
the  case  of  Emile^  notably,  Madame  de  Luxembourg 
and  M.  de  Malesherbes  proved  themselves  good, 
obliging,  and  devoted  to  Rousseau,  though  he  repaid 
157 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

them,  I  admit,  only  with  marked  ingratitude.     But, 
as  for  the   encyclopaedists,   it    is  impossible  to    deny 
their   constant    hostility    to    him.      The    reasons   are 
well    known.      They    did    not    dare    to    sign    their 
works,  and    this  man  wrote    on    the    frontispiece   of 
his,   "every  honest  man  should  avow  the  books  he 
publishes."     They   formed  a  coterie,  and    this   man, 
who   stood   apart,    alone    disputed    the    public   atten- 
tion   they  meant    to  monopolise.     To  be  convinced 
of  the  reality  of  the    injury  and  of  its  importance, 
read,  in  the  Memoirs  of  Marmontel,  a  page  that  is 
more  than  malevolent  on  .  .  .  Buffon,  who  did  not 
frequent,  any  more  than  Rousseau,  the  company  of  the 
Baron    d'Holbach    or    Madame  GeofFrin.     Again,  in 
their  charges  against  the  philosophers,  even  the  bishops 
distinguished  and  separated  Rousseau  from  the  rest  of 
the  troop.     "  The    famous  Jean-Jacques    Rousseau," 
said  one  of  them,  "merits   special    exception  among 
the    modern    enemies    of    Christianity.      He    knows 
better  than  anybody  the  so-called  philosophers  of  our 
days,  and  it  is  undoubtedly  because  he  knows  them 
too   well   that   he  will   not   have   in   common   with 
them  either  the  name  they  affect  or  the   principles 
they  enunciate."     Could  they  tolerate  this  language  ? 
So    they    replied,    not   openly — for    that   was    not 
their    method — but    in  an    underhand    way,  by  little 
treacherous  insinuations,   by   attacking   the  writings, 
the  person,  and  the  character  of  Rousseau  ;  by  paint- 
ing him  as  a  "  monster  of  pride  "  to  those  who  did  not 
158 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

know  him  ;  by  estranging  from  him  those  who  knew 
him  badly  ;  by  making  him  ridiculous  in  the  eyes  of 
those  who  knew  him  better.  And  as  they  were 
numerous,  as  they  filled  the  salons  of  Paris,  as  in  the 
absence  of  Rousseau  himself,  of  BufFon,  and  of 
Voltaire,  they  had  the  airs  of  great  men  and  the 
assurance  of  oracles,  as  they  were  in  short  the  true 
dispensers  of  esteem  and  literary  reputation,  so  they 
created  among  the  men  of  letters  and  the  ladies  a 
prejudice  unfavourable  and  soon  injurious  to  Rousseau. 
The  encyclopaedists  persecuted  Rousseau  as  they  did 
so  many  others,  with  the  same  proceedings,  after 
the  same  manner,  and  in  the  same  measure  that 
they  persecuted  Freron,  ,for  example,  and  all  those 
generally  who  were  not  of  their  clique. 

When  to  this  is  now  added  the  condemnation  of 
Emile^  a  warrant  issued  for  the  arrest  of  Rousseau 
by  the  Parliament  of  Paris,  the  soil  of  Geneva  inter- 
dicted to  the  author  of  the  Profession  de  fo'i  du  Vicaire 
Savoyard^  the  magistrates  of  Berne  giving  him  twenty- 
four  hours  to  leave  their  territory,  the  clergymen  of 
Neuchatel  exciting  the  population  of  Motiers-Travers 
against  him — then  we  shall  understand  that  if  this 
is  not  persecution,  it  is  at  least  the  semblance  of  it, 
and  quite  a  good  semblance,  and  that  a  man  such 
as  Rousseau  could  easily  be  mistaken  about  it.  But 
when  a  little  later  the  police  forbade  him,  out  of 
deference  to  Madame  d'Epinay,  to  read  his  Confessions 
in    the   salons  of   Paris,  that  is  to  say,  according  to 

159 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

himself,  to  offer  his  apology  against  his  calumniators, 
or  again  when  Voltaire  waxed  loudly  indignant  that 
the  presence  of  this  "clock-maker's  boy"  should  be 
tolerated  at  Paris, — who  was  still  under  warrant  for 
arrest, — what  in  all  the  world  was  Rousseau  to  think 
of  Voltaire  and  Madame  d'Epinay  ? 

All  the  same,  I  do  not  deny  that  Rousseau 
singularly  exaggerated,  magnified,  disfigured  the 
facts.  In  the  solitude,  for  which,  whatever  be  said, 
nobody  was  less  suited,  no  matter  what  unjust  or 
absurd  suspicion  offers  itself  to  his  heated  spirit,  no 
matter  what  phantom  presents  itself,  Rousseau  begins 
by  believing  it,  then  welcomes  it,  puts  all  his  trust  in 
it,  does  nothing  to  dispel  it,  and  seeks  rather  to  give 
it  the  body  and  reality  it  lacks.  His  ingenuity  in 
this  matter  is  terrible  against  himself.  And,  with 
that  characteristic  pride  in  his  own  understanding, 
he  prefers  to  doubt  his  friends  and  protectors  rather 
than  the  infallibility  of  his  imagination.  This 
is  what  M.  Eugene  Ritter  had  already  shown  so 
well  in  his  Nouvelles  Recherches  sur  les  Confemons  et 
la  Correspondance  de  Rousseau^  and  M.  Maugras  has 
endeavoured  to  make  it  still  more  evident.  Fortunate 
he  is  in  this  at  least,  that  he  does  not  return  once 
again  to  Madame  d'Epinay,  of  whom  Rousseau  un- 
doubtedly said  much  ill  in  his  Confessions^  but  who 
has  had  good  revenge  in  mixing  herself  up  as  she 
has  done  in  the  history  of  Rousseau  ! 

A  good  example  of  Rousseau's  unfortunate   hasti- 
i6o 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

ness  of  suspicion  will  be  found  in  the  long  account 
M.    Maugras   gives  of  Emile.     Why  did    Rousseau, 
all    of   a    sudden,   during   the   leisurely   printing   of 
his   book,  take    it   into  his    head    that    the   Jesuits 
had    seized     his    work,    that    they   were    going    to 
delay   its    publication,   and,    counting    on    his    near 
demise,    were    proposing     to    corrupt    its    text   and 
opinions  ?       As    if    the    Jesuits    at    this    time    had 
not    other    matters    to    think   of    than    persecuting 
Rousseau !        But    he   takes   it    into   his    head    be- 
cause   he   takes    it    into    his    head,    he    believes    it 
because  he  believes  it ;  unless  it  be,  as  M.  Maugras 
says,    that     his     madness    was     now     beginning     to 
affect  his  brain.       The   same   observation    is   to   be 
made  on  his  great  quarrel  with  David   Hume.      M. 
Maugras    gives  a  curious  and  instructive  account  of 
it,  to  which  I  shall  be  content  to  add  a  few  words. 
Three    years   after    the   quarrel,    Rousseau   suddenly 
discovers  an  act  of  treachery  on  the  part  of  Hume 
which  he  had  not  till  then  suspected.     "They  have 
removed  my  portraits  which  are  like  me,"  he  says, 
"to  replace   them   by  one  which   gives   me  a  wild 
look  and   the  face  of  a  Cyclops."     And  here  is  the 
abomination  of  desolation  :     "  This  pleasing    portrait 
was  accompanied  by  one  of  David  Hume,  who  really 
has  the  head  of  a  Cyclops,  but  whom  they  have  given 
a  charming  air."     Certainly  he  had  reason  to  suspect 
that    when     Hume   commissioned     this     portrait    at 
London,  it  was  not  "  from  friendly  motives  "  ;  but  all 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

the  same  he  could  not  then  have  divined  the  purpose 
of  this  Cyclops.  But  he  knows  it  now :  by  the 
odious  character  of  his  face  they  wished  his  spirit  to 
be  judged,  and  they  succeeded. 

This  is  another  instance  of  Rousseau's  madness,  as 
M.  Maugras  says  rightly  :  but,  instead  of  seeking  a 
purely  physiological  cause  for  his  malady,  should  he 
not  rather  have  found  the  true  cause  in  the  pangs  of 
remorse,  of  which  the  Confessions  may  pass  as  authentic 
testimony ;  in  these  misfortunes,  assuredly  common- 
place, whose  effect  upon  an  organisation  so  peculiar 
as  that  of  Rousseau  he  has  but  failed  to  recognise  ; 
and  finally  even  in  those  very  persecutions  which  he 
had  just  denied  ?  This  may  well  seem  a  paradox  ; 
but,  notwithstanding  his  Confessions^  and  in  spite  of 
his  aggressive  airs,  Rousseau  really  wanted  nothing 
so  much  as  that  capacity  of  resistance,  and  that 
power  of  reaction,  which  precisely  establish,  in  the 
history  of  their  long  quarrel,  and  in  the  history  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  the  superiority  of  Voltaire. 
Nothing,  not  even  his  very  persecutions,  failed 
to  irritate,  and  excite,  and  exalt  Voltaire,  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  nothing,  not  even  his  brief 
elations,  failed  to  stupefy,  and  cast  down,  and  depress 
Rousseau. 

I  am  not  surprised  that  Rousseau's  madness  has  been 

so   reluctantly   believed,  and   that   so   few  critics   or 

historians,  though  they  use  the  word,  have  accepted  the 

fact.     When  Voltaire  called  Rousseau  a  "madman," 
162 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

and  a  "wretched  madman,"  it  was  rather  to  insult 
than  commiserate  him  ;  but  as  for  us,  who  have  better 
knowledge  of  the  Confessions  and  the  Reveries  d^un 
promeneur  solitaire^  we  ask  ourselves,  if  this  is  the  work 
of  madness,  what  is  the  work  of  sanity,  talent,  or  even 
genius  ?  Who  can  be  master  of  his  thought  if  this 
man  was  not  when  he  wrote  so  many  immortal  pages  ? 
These  arguments  belong  to  a  time  when  it  was  believed 
that  madness,  to  merit  its  name,  had  to  attack  the 
whole  understanding.  Now  that  we  know  that  it 
is  otherwise,  that  the  attack  of  madness  is  never 
so  sudden  and  rarely  so  complete,  that  it  is  even  a 
common  thing  for  a  madman  to  rave  only  on  the 
object  of  his  delirium,  we  can  admit  the  coexistence 
of  genius  and  madness  in  the  mind  of  Rousseau,  just  as 
we  admit  it  in  the  mind  of  Swift  or  Tasso.  The  con- 
stitutional malady  from  which  he  had  suffered  so  long, 
and  with  whose  crises  had  coincided  most  of  his 
accesses  of  defiance  or  misanthropy,  had  not  dis- 
appeared, though  time  seemed  to  have  allayed  it  or 
wrought  its  cure :  it  had  only  changed. 

"More  than  four  years  before  his  death,"  says  his 
friend  Corancez,  "I  had  frequent  opportunities  of 
observing  it.  The  access  announced  itself  by  a 
change  on  his  face,  and  a  very  marked  movement 
in  one  of  his  arms.  .  .  When  I  visited  him  and 
saw  these  signs,  I  made  up  my  mind  that  I  was  to  hear 
from  his  mouth  all  the  most  extravagant  statements  it 

is  possible  to  imagine.  .  .  These  extravagancies  were 

163 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

always  about  the  enemies  by  whom  he  thought  he 
was  surrounded,  and  the  combined  and  complicated 
snares  in  which  he  thought  he  was  entrapped."  If 
the  testimony  of  Corancez  appear  perhaps  suspicious 
— for  Corancez  needs  Rousseau's  madness  to  prove  his 
suicide — we  have  only  to  open  a  treatise  on  mental 
diseases.  There  we  can  see  at  once  that  there  are 
barely  one  or  two  of  the  ordinary  symptoms  of 
melancholia  wanting  in  the  case  of  Rousseau,  and 
we  can  also  learn  that  "  in  a  great  number  of  cases 
melancholia  becomes  chronic  and  develops  into  a 
habitual  delirium  which  does  not  otherwise  trouble  the 
patient."  Though  for  long  denied,  from  this  false  or 
incomplete  idea  of  mental  derangement,  and  denied 
in  spite  of  evidence — for  if  it  is  not  in  the  Confessions 
or  the  Reveries^  it  flashes  forth  in  the  queer  dialogues 
entitled,  Rousseau  juge  de  yean-yacques — the  mad- 
ness of  Rousseau  cannot  be  doubted  now.  He  was, 
or  became  mad,  not  in  the  vague  and  general  sense  of 
the  term,  but  in  its  proper  and  pathological  sense  ; 
and  his  masterpieces  are  no  evidence  to  the  contrary, 
if  indeed  his  madness  does  not  explain  the  nature, 
character,  and  influence  of  some  of  them. 

There  would  surely  be  no  reason  for  insisting 
so  strongly  on  the  madness  of  Rousseau,  if  no 
consequences  are  to  be  drawn  from  it,  in  as  far 
as  they  affect  the  history  of  his  work  or  influence 
rather  than  of  his  life.      The    madness  of  Rousseau 

was   certainly  not   the   condition,  and   still  less   the 
164 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

material,  the  stuff  of  his  genius  ;  but,  from  the  single 
fact  of  his  madness,  there  has  crept  into  his  very 
masterpieces  an  unhealthy  element,  a  source  of  error 
and  corruption  ;  and  as  this  was  the  most  obvious 
thing  in  Rousseau,  it  has  accordingly  been  the 
most  faithfully  and  most  frequently  imitated.  There 
would  be  an  abundance  of  proofs  of  this,  and  I 
should  like  to  develop  them.  Such  is  this  sove- 
reign right  of  passion,  which  he  may  not  have  been 
the  first  to  proclaim,  but  which  he  aggravated,  by 
endeavouring  to  justify  it  ;  and  which,  amidst  the 
truth  of  the  life  of  this  world,  as  may  be  seen 
every  day,  leads  those  who  follow  it  to  crime,  mad- 
ness, or  death,  and  never  has  led,  and  never  will 
lead  to  anything  else.  There  are  "  splendid  "  passions 
only  as  there  are  "  splendid  "  diseases  or  "  splendid  " 
crimes,  and  all  passion  is  by  nature  bad,  since  it  is 
nothing  practically  but  the  worker  of  trouble  and 
the  counsellor  of  iniquity. 

Such,  too,  is  this  exaggeration  of  the  ego  of 
which  he  is  the  first  example,  though  neither  the 
most  famous  nor  notorious,  a  monstrous  exaggera- 
tion, abnormal,  always  essentially  morbid,  and  the 
smallest  consequence  of  which,  by  destroying  the 
sentiment  of  human  solidarity,  leads  inevitably  to  the 
destruction  of  the  very  principle  of  society.  All 
human  society  rests  on  self-sacrifice  and  the  surrender 
of  personal  desires  to  the  common  weal. 

And  such  too,  perhaps,  would  be  this  feeling  for 
165 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

nature,  of  which  Rousseau  is  honoured  as  the  great 
discoverer.  For  if  we  must  love  nature,  we  should 
not  go  the  length  of  identifying  ourselves  with 
her,  and  certainly  not  of  conforming  to  her 
lessons  of  indifference  and  immorality.  What  if 
I  were  now  to  pass  to  the  political  and  social  ideas 
of  the  citizen  of  Geneva  ?  For  a  hundred  years  and 
more  we  have  not  observed  that,  in  following  the 
impulse  of  Rousseau,  we  have  chosen  a  sick  man  as 
guide.  And,  to  confine  our  observations  only  to 
the  history  of  literature,  if  there  is  so  much  madness 
mingled  with  the  grandeur  of  romanticism,  it  is  the 
'*  fault  of  Rousseau,"  as  used  to  be  said,  and  said 
truly,  but  it  is  above  all  the  fault  of  his  madness. 
Yes,  the  very  madness  of  Rousseau,  more  than  every- 
thing else  perhaps,  contributed  to  his  success  in  his 
time  and  to  his  influence  in  ours  :  and  his  enthusiasts 
may  prefer  this  madness,  if  they  wish,  to  the  wisdom 
of  the  world,  but  it  is  at  least  necessary  to  know 
that  it  is  madness. 

In  the  analysis  of  M.  Maugras's  book  I  have 
endeavoured  to  complete  it,  or,  to  put  it  more 
modestly,  to  indicate  in  what  points  it  would 
gain  by  being  completed.  Biographical  criticism — 
I  repeat  it  in  concluding,  for  it  is  the  subject  of 
his  continual  illusion — does  not  exist  by  itself,  since, 
whatever  may  be  said,  it  would  not  deal  with  Vol- 
taire or  Rousseau   if  they  were  not  the  authors  of 

i66 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

their  works.  The  men  take  up  too  much  place  in 
his  book,  the  works  too  little :  there  is  an  abundance 
of  facts,  but  a  scarcity  of  ideas.  Such  is  the  result 
of  having  been  too  often  in  the  company  of  Madame 
d'Epinay.  This  kind  woman  was  somewhat  given  to 
scandal,  as  Voltaire  said,  and  she  had  the  most  beauti- 
ful black  eyes,  but  little  mental  ballast.  Does  not 
M.  Maugras,  who  has  inherited  from  her  his  hatred 
of  Rousseau,  owe  to  her  also  his  taste  for  gossip  ? 
Let  him  bear  me  no  grudge  for  saying  so,  since, 
at  the  present  time,  as  he  knows,  it  will  only  make 
his  book  more  certain  of  success.  Who  nowadays 
would  not  give  the  Essai  sur  les  Mceun  for  a  few 
fragments  of  Voltaire's  letters  to  Madame  du  Chatelet, 
or  the  Contrat  social  along  with  the  Nouvelle  Helo'ise 
for  the  letters  of  Jean-Jacques  to  Madame  d'Houdetot  ? 
And  I  must  myself  confess  that,  if  M.  Maugras  ever 
finds  them,  I  shall  hasten  to  read  them. 


167 


THE  CLASSIC   AND   ROMANTIC  * 


What  is  a  classic  author  and  what  is  a  romanticist  ? 
Such  is  the  double  question  raised  at  once  by  this 
title,  assuredly  well  calculated  to  excite  our  curiosity 
—  The  Romanticism  of  Classics.  And  the  answer  can 
be  given  in  four  words,  if  we  care  to  believe  M. 
Emile  Deschanel,  four  words,  and  no  more,  of  which 
his  book  is  the  pleasant,  clever,  and  brilliant  de- 
velopment —  too  brilliant,  too  clever,  too  pleasant 
even  sometimes.  A  romanticist  would  be  simply  a 
classic  author  in  the  making ;  and,  reciprocally,  a 
classic  author  would  be  nothing  more  than  a 
romanticist  who  has  attained  his  ideal. 

"Those  whom  we  now  admire  the  most,"  says 
M.  Deschanel,  "and  who  are  in  possession  of  un- 
disputed glory  for  the  future,  were  first  of  all, 
each  in  his  own  way,  revolutionaries  in  literature. 
And  those  who  did  not  make  a  revolution  in 
their  time  have  not  survived,  because  they  had 
neither  the  necessary  importance  nor  force  j  or  they 

*  Le  Romantisme  des  Classifues,  par  M.  Emile  Deschanel.  Paris, 
1883  ;  Calmann  Levy.  [In  this  essay,  as  in  M.  Brunetiere's,  clanique 
is  used  in  the  sense  of  classic  rather  than  of  claislcist. — Translator.'] 

168 


ESSAYS  IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

survive  only  in  the  second  or  third  rank,  in  the 
very  measure  and  proportion  of  the  originality  of 
their  talent."  Are  names  necessary  in  support  of 
this  definition  ?  If  the  author  of  the  Cid  and 
Polyeuctey  for  example,  is  now  a  classic  to  us,  he 
began  by  being  a  romanticist  to  his  contemporaries. 
Was  not  the  animosity  of  authors,  in  this  memorable 
year  1636,  almost  universal  against  the  Cid?  And, 
a  few  years  later,  did  not  the  same  admirers  who 
counted  the  poet  among  the  wits  of  the  Hotel  de 
Rambouillet,  give  an  icy  reception,  as  was  then 
said,  to  Polyeucte?  But,  on  the  other  hand,  if  the 
author  of  Xdire  and  Jlzire — let  me  distinguish  him 
from  the  author  of  Zadig  and  Candide — is  no  longer 
a  classic  for  us,  it  is  just  because  no  man  was 
ever  less  romantic  for  his  contemporaries,  1  mean 
to  say  more  careful  to  humour  their  literary  super- 
stitions, and  to  win  them  through  their  prejudices. 
Moliere  and  La  Fontaine,  Pascal  and  Bossuet,  Racine 
and  Boileau,  Saint-Simon,  Rousseau,  Chateaubriand, 
Victor  Hugo,  are  all  classics,  are  they  not,  but  all 
more  or  less  romantic  ?  On  the  contrary,  Destouches 
and  Lamotte,  Nicole  and  Bretonneau,  Dangeau, 
Marais,  Luynes  as  well  as  Barbier,  Grimm 
along  with  d'Alembert,  and  Saint  -  Lambert  be- 
sides Morellet,  Etienne  and  de  Jouy,  Scribe  and 
Ponsard  are  not  romantic  at  all,  if  history  is  to 
be   believed,   but    also   not  classic.      "  A   man   lives 

down  everything  only  by  reason  of  strength  or  genius, 
169 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

just  as  by  reason  of  this  very  strength  or  this  very 
genius  he  began  by  disturbing  the  w^ays  of  thinking 
of  his  contemporaries,  by  scandalising  them,  by  re- 
volting them,  by  calling  forth  their  criticisms,  their 
railings,  and  their  insults,  by  making  a  hole,  like  a 
cannon-ball,  in  their  prejudices  and  their  old  poetic 
regime." 

And  this  is  w^hy  w^hoever  was  at  first  received 
w^ith  the  universal  applause  of  his  contemporaries, 
and  thus  paid  for  his  glory  in  the  money  of  popu- 
larity, dies  v^ith  the  generations  whose  favour  he 
has  exhausted,  and  has  nothing  to  claim  of  posterity. 
Such  was  the  case  of  Mdlle.  de  Scuderi,  the  case  of 
the  Abbe  Deiille,  the  case  too  of  twenty  others. 
From  not  having  been  sufficiently  romantic,  they 
have  not  become  classic.  The  House  of  Fame,  in 
the  pretty  saying  of  Marmontel,  is  like  the  kingdom 
of  Heaven  :  Regnum  coelorum  vim  patitur^  et  violenti 
rapiunt  illud.  It  is  to  be  got  into  only  by  climbing, 
or  by  knocking  down  the  walls,  or  by  breaking 
the  fences.  To  make  the  attempt  merely,  is  to  be 
already  a  romanticist ;  but  to  bring  it  to  a  good 
issue  is  to  be  truly  a  classic.  So  that  if  all  the 
romanticists  have  not  yet  become  classics,  without 
any  desire  for  it  on  their  part,  all  the  classics  at- 
least,  without  any  knowledge  of  it,  began  by  being 
romanticists.  And  the  acme  of  romanticism,  by  a 
consequence,   perhaps    unlooked    for,    but    after    all 

apparently    quite    logical,    is    classicism.      "  If    some 

170 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

people,"  says  M.  Deschanel,  "  did  not  share  all  our 
admiration  for  the  seventeenth  century,  I  should  be 
inclined  to  think  that  they  were  perhaps  as  ignorant 
of  the  best  reasons  for  admiring  ours  also,  to  which 
they  wish  to  confine  themselves.  ...  It  is  from 
the  same  source  and  the  same  causes  that  our 
admiration  arises,  be  it  for  the  great  writers  of 
former  times,  or  for  those  of  to-day." 

Such  is,  if  I  mistake  not,  the  leading  motive  of 
M.  Deschanel's  book.  We  could  follow,  one  by 
one,  the  successive  applications  which  he  makes  of  it, 
or,  more  exactly,  the  demonstrations  which  he  seeks  in 
Corneille's  C/W,  Rotrou's  Saint-Genesty  and  Moliere's 
Don  yuan.  But  this  would  deny  the  reader  the 
pleasure  of  searching  for  them  in  the  book  itself. 
It  is  better,  more  useful,  and  perhaps  more  interest- 
ing, to  approach  the  idea  boldly,  and  to  show,  even 
by  the  contradictions  it  gives  rise  to,  its  importance 
as  much  as  its  ingenuity. 

Shall  we  accept,  at  the  outset,  M.  Deschanel's 
definition  of  romanticism  ?  It  is  true,  I  admit,  that 
the  word  romanticism,  after  fifty  years  and  more  of 
passionate  discussion,  is  none  the  less,  even  to-day, 
very  vague  and  undetermined.  We  may  therefore 
admit  that,  to  a  certain  extent,  each  one  of  us, 
subject  to  the  single  condition  that  he  defines  it 
clearly,  uses  the  word  for  that  matter  pretty  much 
as  he  pleases.  Yet,  should  this  liberty  of  interpreta- 
tion become  even  wider  still,  the  fact  remains  that 

171 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

it  is  limited  at  least  by  the  claims  of  history ; 
and  this  is  what  M.  Deschanel,  in  my  opinion,  has 
not  taken  into  sufficient  account.  It  is  possible, 
for  so  it  is  said,  that  there  are  no  longer  any  roman- 
ticistSy  but  all  the  same  there  is  no  doubt  that  there 
were  some  formerly.  Every  definition  of  romanticism 
should  therefore  agree  first  of  all  with  the  works 
and  the  men  of  the  well-marked  historical  epoch 
of  which  the  very  word  romanticism  remains  the 
title  in  our  literature.  We  keep  on  repeating 
and  criticising  the  saying  of  the  master :  "  The 
wretched  words  of  strife,  classic  and  romantic, 
have  fallen  into  the  abyss  of  1830,  as  Gluckist  and 
Piccinist  into  the  gulf  of  1 789 " ;  which  only 
means  that  in  1883  we  are  not  in  1827.  And  it  is 
true.  But  the  historians  of  music,  I  imagine,  do  not 
ticket  certain  contents  "  Gluckist "  or  "  Piccinist," 
according  to  their  own  invention,  caprice,  or  fancy  ; 
and  the  one  word  and  the  other,  if  they  do  not 
represent  anything  any  longer,  did  unquestionably 
represent  something  ;  and  this  something  is  strictly 
defined  by  the  very  nature  and  opposition  of  the 
works  of  Gluck  and  Piccini.  The  historians  of 
literature,  in  their  turn,  may  hold  such  and  such  an 
idea  of  romanticism  as  they  wish  ;  but  if  they  claim 
to  have  their  definition  accepted,  it  will  have  neces- 
sarily to  agree,  and  first  of  all,  with  the  dramas  of  a 
Dumas  and  a  Victor  Hugo. 

I    do   not    further    insist   on    this   point,   and    less 
172 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

still  on  the  incongruity  supposed  to  have  been  found 
in  the  differences  of  meaning  which  M.  Deschanel 
has  given  the  w^ord  romanticism.  It  is  only  just  to 
observe  that  this  book  is  but  a  beginning.  M. 
Deschanel's  predecessor  in  the  chair  at  the  College 
de  France  had  attacked  at  the  same  time  the  very 
history  of  romanticism.  But  M.  Deschanel,  v^^ho 
considers  romanticism  in  history  as  the  last  accom- 
plished phase  of  one  long  evolution  in  literature,  has 
rather  proposed  to  find  and  bring  to  light,  during  the 
course  of  this  evolution,  the  signs  which  prelude  the 
future  romanticism.  There  is  in  Corneille,  for  ex- 
ample, a  tendency  to  choose  subjects  which  are  modern 
and  living  presentations,  as  it  were,  of  the  historical 
reality ;  in  Racine,  "  the  most  vivid  portrayal  of  the 
passions "  ;  in  Boileau,  "  bold  innovations,  at  least  in 
point  of  style  and  expression  "  ;  and  all  this  is  roman- 
ticism. And  there  is,  too,  in  Bossuet,  "  audacity  of 
expression  with  simplicity,  familiarity  united  to  gran- 
deur "  ;  in  Saint-Simon,  "  that  language  gathered  from 
everywhere,  swarming  with  common  idioms  and 
phrases  "  ;  in  Rousseau,  "  the  passionate  feeling  for  and 
true  painting  of  exterior  nature  "  ;  and  all  this  is  still 
romanticism.  Definitions  are  not  made  a  priori^  un- 
less perhaps  in  mathematics.  In  history,  they  are 
evolved  imperceptibly  from  the  patient  study  of  facts. 
If  M.  Deschanel  has  not  given  us  the  definition  of 
romanticism  which  we  claimed  a  moment  ago,  it  is 
really  because  the  object  of  his  teaching  is  to  prepare 

173 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

this  very  definition.  We  shall  find  it  where  it  should 
be,  at  the  end  of  the  course  and  not  at  the  beginning. 
And  in  the  meantime  M.  Deschanel  recognises  one 
after  the  other,  and  tests  by  contact  with  works,  and 
determines  by  history,  the  divers  elements  which 
finally  should  concur,  balance  in  some  way,  and 
blend  in  the  unity  of  the  definition.  This  is  evidently 
his  right ;  he  was  free  to  choose  his  own  method. 

But  then  what  he  should  have  defined  more  strictly 
is  what  he  means  by  this  other  word,  very  general 
and  wide  also,  of  innovation  in  art.  For  example 
he  praises  Corneille  for  the  "  innovation  "  in  the  very 
choice  of  the  subject  of  his  C/W,  an  historical  subject 
— at  least  for  the  men  of  the  seventeenth  century — 
and  a  modern  subject.  But,  modern  subjects  and 
historical  subjects,  a  Gaston  de  Foix^  a  SoUman^  a 
Marie  Stuart,  had  already  been  performed  before 
Corneille  ;  and  after  Corneille  they  continued  to  be 
performed,  a  Thomas  Morus  and  a  Comte  d^Essex^  an 
Osman  and  a  Bajazet,  the  Englishman  and  the  Turk, 
and  even  a  Charles  le  Hardi,  due  de  Bourgogne,  if 
indeed  this  piece  was  ever  acted.  In  another  place, 
M.  Deschanel  honours  Moliere  for  the  "  innovation  " 
of  having  boldly  written  in  prose  the  five  acts  of  the 
Avarey  and  cites  the  saying  of  the  time  :  "  Ah,  is 
Moliere  mad  to  think  of  making  us  swallow  five  acts 
of  prose  ?  "  But,  besides  the  fact  that  M.  Deschanel, 
in  regard  to  the  authenticity  of  the  tale,  does  not 
note  that  the  public  had  "  swallowed  "  very  well,  four 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

years  previously,  the  five  acts  in  prose  of  Don  yuan — 
if  the  use  of  prose  in  the  drama  is  an  innovation 
which  merits  remark,  it  wzs  assuredly  not  Moliere  who 
first  made  the  venture.  All  the  comedies  of  Pierre 
Larivey  are  in  prose,  and  in  prose  too  all  the  tragedies 
of  the  famous  La  Serre.  Le  Pedant  joue  of  Cyrano 
de  Bergerac,  which  dates  from  1654,  is  in  five  acts 
and  in  prose  ;  and  the  tragedy  of  the  celebrated  Abbe 
d'Aubignac,  a  Zenobie^  given  in  1645,  is  likewise  in 
prose  and  in  five  acts. 

I  attribute  no  more  importance  than  is  necessary 
to  these  trifles,  for  they  are  trifles,  and  M.  Deschanel, 
neglecting  the  exceptions,  is  quite  right,  after  all,  to 
date  the  "  innovation "  only  from  him  who  made  it 
successful.  All  the  same  it  is  true  that  "  innovation  " 
is  a  delicate  question  in  art,  and  I  fear  that  M. 
Deschanel  has  not  treated  it  fully  enough.  For 
whom  must  "  innovation  "  surprise,  revolt,  and  scan- 
dalise, to  be  truly  "innovation"  ?  Is  it  the  authors  ? 
Is  it  the  public  ?  If  it  is  the  public,  there  would  be 
nothing  new  in  the  Cid  but  the  splendid  revelation 
of  Corneille's  genius,  since,  from  the  first  day,  "all 
Paris  had  for  Chimene  the  eyes  of  Rodrigue "  ;  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  what  would  be  new  in  the  work  of 
Moliere  would  be  his  Garde  de  Navarre^  since  it  was 
this  that  contemporaries  received  the  most  coldly.  But 
if  it  is  the  authors,  we  would  need  to  be  told  which 
authors :  Scuderi  who  criticises  the  Cidy  or  Rotrou 
who  vindicates  it,  Voltaire  who  ridicules  the  Nouvelle 
17s 


BRUNETltRE'S  ESSAYS 

Helo'ise^  or  Freron  who  admires  it,  Hoffman  attacking 
the  Martyrs,  or  Fontanes  celebrating  them  in  the 
best  verses  he  ever  wrote,  and  Sainte-Beuve  hesitating 
to  recognise  in  the  Contemplatiom  the  poet  of  the 
Orientales,  or  M.  Vacquerie  definitely  tracing  him 
in  the  ^atre  Vents  de  V Esprit?  I  make  no 
decision,  I  merely  state  some  doubts.  But  it  will 
perhaps  be  granted  that  in  a  book  where  the  very 
classics  are  studied  only  in  so  far  as  they  are 
"  revolutionary,"  it  would  not  have  been  at  all  super- 
fluous to  say  by  what  precise  signs  '*  revolutions  "  and 
*'  revolutionaries  "  in  literature  are  to  be  recognised. 

And  yet,  on  this  point  also,  M.  Deschanel  may 
have  had  his  own  reasons  for  refraining  and  with- 
holding the  definition.  Or  rather  could  he  not  reply 
that  he  had  no  need  to  give  this  very  definition  of 
"  revolution  "  and  "  innovation  "  in  art  which  we  ask 
of  him,  since  it  is  plainly  implied  in  the  very  manner 
in  which  he  has  put  the  question  ?  Indeed,  if  roman- 
ticism is  for  us  only  the  last  term  in  a  long  literary 
evolution,  it  is  something  more  for  M.  Deschanel ; 
it  is  its  completion,  its  perfection,  its  crowning.  And 
when  he  tells  us  that  his  admiration  for  the  great 
writers  of  former  times  or  to-day,  "arises  from  the 
same  source  and  the  same  causes,"  he  really  im- 
plies that  he  recognises  in  romanticism  the  bloom 
and  flourish  of  what  was  still  only  in  germ  in  our 
classics.       The     romanticism    of    Corneille    is    what 

Corneille  attempted  in  tragedy  so  as  to  come  nearer 
176 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

the  drama  of  Victor  Hugo  :  the  romanticism  of  MoHere 
is  what  seems  in  Moliere  to  prepare  the  drama  of 
Victor  Hugo  j  the  romanticism  of  Racine  is  the 
quality  to  be  recognised  in  Racine  which  could 
adapt  itself  to  the  drama  of  Victor  Hugo.  And,  more 
generally,  the  romantic  elements  in  the  classics  are  those 
which  are  capable  of  being  utilised  by  romanticism. 
M.  Deschanel  calls  romantic  in  the  past  everything 
romanticism  has  profited  by  in  a  time  nearer  our  own. 
He  also  calls  innovation  everything  that  has  been 
successively  added,  so  as  to  become  romanticism^  to 
the  common  base  of  classicism. 

It  is  here  that  we  part  with  him.  M.  Deschanel 
has  apparently  another  idea  of  a  classic  than  we 
have.  Who  is  right  ?  Who  is  wrong  ?  We  shall 
make  the  reader  judge  by  endeavouring  to  give  this 
word  classic  a  definite  meaning.  It  is  used  somewhat 
at  random.  But  in  the  desire  to  make  it  wide, 
care  must  be  taken  not  to  make  it  meaningless. 


II 


By  inveterate  habit  we  believe  that  if  we  confer 
on  any  author,  poet  or  prose  -  writer,  this  title  of 
classic,  we  raise  him,  by  the  mere  fact  of  this  ap- 
pellation, above  all  those  whom  we  do  not  hail  by 

M 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

the  same  name.  But  we  really  only  distinguish 
him  from  them,  and  this  is  by  no  means  the  same 
thing. 

So  let  us  not  trouble  with  so  many  subtleties,  and 
let  us  go  back  in  quite  a  simple  way  to  the  usage. 
In  literature,  as  elsewhere,  in  the  most  modest  and 
at  the  same  time  most  universal  acceptation  of  the 
word,  a  classic  is  an  artist  in  whose  school  we  could 
study  without  fear  of  being  misguided  by  his  lessons 
or  his  examples.  Or  again,  it  is  he  who  possesses, 
in  a  degree  more  or  less  eminent,  the  qualities  whose 
imitation,  if  it  cannot  do  any  good,  cannot  at  least 
do  any  harm.  You  will  plainly  risk  nothing  if 
you  take  as  a  model  of  the  art  of  writing  in  prose 
the  Histoire  de  Charles  XII  or  the  S'lecle  de  Louis 
XlVi  and,  without  being  able  to  flatter  yourself 
on  ever  attaining  this  simplicity,  this  ease,  this  pro- 
priety, the  worst  that  can  happen  to  you  is  to  learn 
to  appreciate  propriety,  ease,  and  simplicity.  But,  on 
the  contrary,  whoever  were  to  take  Saint-Simon 
as  a  model,  and,  as  M.  Deschanel  says,  "  that  some- 
times inextricable  sentence,  many-headed,  many-tailed, 
entangled,  but  always  rolling,  pushed,  dragged  by  the 
flood  of  inexhaustible  passion  and  suppressed  rage," 
could  contract  only  the  worst  habits  of  style,  and 
ways  of  thinking,  too,  as  mad  as  those  of  the  noble 
duke,  even  in  the  most  unimportant  affairs. 

Is  this  to  say  that  the  nimble  and   correct  pencil 

of  Voltaire   is  superior   to   the   impetuous   brush   of 

178 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

Saint-Simon,  or  the  brilliant  pictures  of  the  Steele 
de  Louis  XIF  to  what  M.  Deschanel  calls  the  grand 
frescoes  of  the  Memoirs?  By  no  means.  If  the 
possession  of  such  and  such  a  quality  in  an  eminent 
degree  is  not  enough  to  give  the  rank  of  a  classic, 
there  is  this  compensation  that  one  can  be  a  classic 
and  yet  not  have  the  same  quality  to  the  same 
degree.  Let  us  emphasise  this,  for  here,  and  not 
elsewhere,  is  the  point  of  divergence.  Of  Sallust 
and  Tacitus,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  classic  is 
Sallust,  but  no  more  is  there  any  doubt  that  Tacitus 
is  the  greater. 

It  is  a  delicate  matter  to  decide  with  sufficient 
exactness  if  there  are  particular  qualities  which  make 
an  artist  really  worthy  of  being  taken  as  model.  It 
has  been  said  there  are ;  and  when  this  is  asserted,  it 
is  added,  more  or  less  explicitly,  that  these  should  be 
above  all  qualities  of  order,  clearness,  measure,  dis- 
cretion, taste,  .  .  let  us  say  the  word,  the  qualities  of 
the  Mean.  Now,  there  is  no  doubt,  that  if  we  attach 
this  meaning  to  it,  Racine  would  be  more  classic  than 
Corneille,  which  strictly  speaking  may  be  admitted  ; 
only,  Regnard  would  be  more  classic  than  Moliere, 
whjch  is  sure  to  set  us  a-thinking  ;  Massillon  more 
classic  than  Bossuet,  which  we  are  decidedly  unwilling 
to  believe  ;  and  the  good  Nicole,  in  short,  more  classic 
than  Pascal,  which  ends  in  destroying  the  definition. 
But  if  we  note  that  what  makes  the  immortal  youth 

of  the  Provinciales   is    its   variety  of  tone,  as   what 

179 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

makes  the  unalterable  beauty  not  only  of  the  Sermons 
but  even  of  the  Funeral  Orations  of  Bossuet  is  their 
familiarity  in  their  highest  eloquence,  we  see  another 
idea  of  a  classic  already  dawning. 

We  then  begin  to  suspect  that  the  qualities 
which  just  seemed  of  the  Mean,  really  seemed  so  only 
by  reason  of  their  very  equilibrium  and  the  har- 
mony of  their  proportions.  If  Massillon  is  to 
some  people,  in  the  familiar  word,  more  touch- 
ing than  Bossuet,  it  is  because,  among  all  the 
qualities  that  constitute  the  orator,  sensibility  domin- 
ated all  the  others  to  such  an  extent  in  Massillon, 
that  they  must  be  sought  for  to  be  discovered  and 
given  their  due.  In  the  same  way  if  Regnard  can 
have  been  considered  more  gay  than  Moliere,  it  is 
really  because  he  is  more  constantly  gay,  being,  more- 
over, never  moved,  never  profound,  never,  in  short, 
philosophic.  And  this  consequence  follows,  that  what 
properly  constitutes  a  classic  is  the  equilibrium  in 
him  of  all  the  faculties  which  go  to  make  the  perfec- 
tion of  the  work  of  art,  a  healthiness  of  mind,  just  as 
the  healthiness  of  the  body  is  the  equilibrium  of  the 
forces  which  resist  death. 

A  classic  is  a  classic  because  in  his  work  all  the 
feculties  find  their  legitimate  function  —  without 
imagination  overstepping  reason,  without  logic  im- 
peding the  flight  of  the  imagination,  without  senti- 
ment encroaching  on  the  rights  of  good  sense,  without 

good  sense  chilling  the  warmth  of  sentiment,  without 

1 80 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

the  matter  allowing  itself  to  be  despoiled  of  the  per- 
suasive authority  it  should  borrow  from  the  charm  of 
the  form,  and  without  the  form  ever  usurping  an 
interest  which  should  belong  only  to  the  matter. 

Is  this  equilibrium,  or  rather  this  balancing  of  all 
the  faculties,  rarer  in  the  history  of  art,  or  commoner, 
than  the  marked  predominance  of  one  faculty  over  all 
the  others,  of  the  power  of  imagination,  for  example, 
over  the  power  of  abstraction,  or  the  capacity  of  feeling 
over  the  capacity  of  reason  ?  I  should  willingly  believe 
it,  for  my  part ;  but  it  is  a  question  I  do  not  wish  to 
broach,  since,  whatever  way  it  is  decided,  the  decision 
does  not  change  the  condition  of  the  problem,  and  the 
definition  of  a  classic  remains  the  same.  What  alone 
is  important  to  state  is  that  this  healthiness  of  spirit, 
in  this  respect  always  to  be  compared  with  the  healthi- 
ness of  the  body,  depends  hardly  any  less  on  the  cir- 
cumstances than  on  the  particular  nature  of  the  subject. 
It  is  not  sufficient  to  be  born  with  the  aptitudes  which 
make  a  classic  :  these  aptitudes  must  be  invited  or 
entreated  to  develop  by  the  favour  of  a  happy  con- 
junction. We  can  try  to  determine  at  least  some  of 
the  conditions  which  rule  this  conjunction,  and  thus 
eliminate  what  at  first  seems  to  be  purely  fortuitous. 


i8i 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 


III 

It  is  evident  that  in  the  first  place  the  language  must 
have  attained  its  point  of  perfection  or  maturity.  The 
comparison,  w^e  remember,  is  by  La  Bruyere  ;  and  the 
aptness  it  had  even  tvv^o  hundred  years  ago  is  increased 
in  our  time  by  all  the  excellent  reasons  which  have  been 
urged  for  likening  languages  to  organisms.  For  either 
this  w^ord  organism  means  nothing,  and  serves  only  to 
put  us  on  the  vv^rong  scent  in  our  ignorance  of  the 
lavv^s  which  should  govern  the  evolution  of  languages, 
or  it  signifies  above  all  that  languages  are  born,  live, 
and  die,  and,  since  they  live,  pass  a  point  which  can  be 
justly  called  that  of  their  perfection.  On  the  one  side 
of  this  point  they  are  still  in  the  undeveloped  state  of 
what  begins  to  be,  they  have  the  greenness  and  crude- 
ness  of  fruit  which  is  not  yet  ripe  ;  and  on  the  other 
side  of  this  point  they  are  already  in  the  failing  state  of 
what  is  coming  to  an  end.  It  will  be  noted  that  what 
we  here  say  of  languages  could  as  well  be  said  of  the 
means  of  expression  which  are  peculiar  to  each  form 
of  art.  A  painter,  no  matter  how  great  he  be,  and 
with  what  marvellous  faculties  he  be  endowed,  is 
classic  only  in  so  far  as  he  has  the  good  luck 
to  be  born  at  the  precise  moment  of  the  perfec- 
tion of  the  technical  means  of  the  art  of  painting. 
Some  lovers   of  paradoxes   believed   that   they   dealt 

Raphael    a    fearful     blow    by    accusing    him,    in    a 
182 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

word  which  is  well  worth  preserving,  of  having  been 
only  a  simple  profiteur.  It  is  certain  that  if  Raphael 
had  lived  a  hundred  years  earlier  he  would  not  have 
been  Raphael,  just  as  he  should  not  have  been  had  he 
been  born  fifty  or  sixty  years  later.  But  he  profited 
from  the  fact  that  he  lived  at  his  time,  and  it  is  from 
this  above  all  that  he  is  a  classic.  It  is  not  otherwise 
either  with  the  classics  of  Greek  and  Latin  antiquity, 
or  with  our  classics  of  the  seventeenth  century,  or 
with  the  classics  of  Spanish  or  Italian  literature,  English 
or  German.  In  every  other  time  than  that  in  which 
they  lived,  they  might  perhaps  have  been  personally 
what  they  are  ;  but  their  work  would  certainly  not 
have  been  to  the  same  degree  classic.  It  might  have 
had  other  qualities,  perhaps  all  the  other  qualities  to 
be  desired,  but  it  would  not  have  had  those  qualities 
which  it  owes  to  its  coincidence  with  the  point  of 
perfection  of  the  language  ;  and  if  the  word  classic 
has  any  meaning,  we  cannot  possibly  deny  that  it  is 
these  qualities  which  it  indicates  before  and  above  all 
the  others.  The  comparison  is  in-  all  points  accurate. 
We  may  prefer  green  apples,  we  may  prefer  bletted 
pears,  but  we  cannot  pretend  that  it  is  just  when 
apples  are  green  or  pears  are  bletted  that  they  are 
ripe. 

It  will  be  asked  what  constitutes  the  perfection  of 
a  language  ;  for  it  is  very  true  that  to  say,  as  is  some- 
times done,  that  it  is  felt  but  cannot  be  expressed,  is 
to  elude  the  question  and  to  make  no  reply.      But, 

183 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

though  there  are  certain  questions  which  perhaps 
should  be  eluded,  I  shall  add  that  the  true  difficulty 
does  not  lie  there.  With  serious  critics  we  would  come 
to  an  agreement  easily  enough  as  to  what  constitutes 
the  perfection  of  a  language.  Empirically,  it  would  be 
sufficient  to  study  closely  a  few  masterpieces  of  the 
art  of  writing — a  Provinciale  or  a  Sermon  of  Bossuet, 
Athalie  or  Tartufe^  a  chapter  of  Gil  Bias  or  the  Steele 
de  Louis  XIV- — and  to  examine  wherein  their  language 
is  superior  to  works  of  the  same  kind  which  come  im- 
mediately below  them.  Theoretically,  there  wpuld 
be  found,  in  the  very  nature  of  a  language  and  in  its 
conformity,  more  or  less  adherent,  if  I  may  say  so, 
to  the  particular  nature  of  the  national  genius,  not 
only  good  reasons,  but  decisive  reasons,  for  deciding 
at  what  age,  at  what  time  of  its  development,  it  has 
been  better  written  than  at  every  other  time.  What 
gives  greater  interest  to  the  problem  we  are  discuss- 
ing, for  this  is  really  the  point  where  we  fail  to 
agree,  is  to  know,  and  by  what  signs  other  than  those 
which  are  said  to  characterise  it,  how  long  this  time  of 
perfection  has  endured.  If  we  succeed,  we  shall  have 
determined  at  the  same  time  still  another  condition 
which  makes  a  classic. 

Now  it  seems  that  in  general  this  time  of  perfec- 
tion lasts  almost  as  long  as  the  independence  of  a 
literature  with  respect  to  foreign  literatures.  We  give 
and  we  receive,  we  are  borrowed  from  and  repaid,  we 

imitate  models  and  set  up  models.     There  is  a  French 

184 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

literature  which  is  still  quite  Greek  and  Latin,  and 
there  is  another  which  is  quite  English  and  quite 
German.  There  is  also,  by  compensation,  an  English 
literature  which  is  quite  French — that  of  the  time  of 
Charles  II ;  and  there  is  likewise  a  German  literature 
— that  which  Gottsched  governed.  But  on  the  other 
hand,  there  is  a  French  literature,  as  well  as  an  English 
and  a  German  literature,  which  is  deeply  imprinted 
with  the  mark  of  the  national  genius,  relieved,  liber- 
ated to  use  a  better  word,  from  foreign  imitation,  a 
literature  where  a  whole  race  recognises  its  own  con- 
ception of  life,  its  particular  interpretation  of  nature 
and  man,  the  personal  turn  it  has  given  to  the  ex- 
pression of  these  general  sentiments  which  are  the 
common  patrimony  and  lasting  heritage  of  humanity. 
This  is  properly  what  we  call  a  classic  literature.  It 
impresses  on  these  general  sentiments,  which  every 
man  who  sees  the  light  of  this  world  is  capable,  since 
he  is  a  man,  of  feeling  and  realising,  a  form  so  particular 
that  its  value  escapes  foreigners,  and  that  one  must 
be  national  himself  to  feel,  to  relish,  and  to  appreciate. 
The  historians  of  Italian  literature  call  this  period  il 
secolo  cforo ;  for  them  it  is  the  fifteenth  century,  the 
age  of  Ariosto  in  poetry  and  Machiavelli  in  prose. 
The  historians  of  English  literature  call  it  by  a 
more  significant  name,  the  Jugustan  age;  it  com- 
prises, roughly,  the  time  of  Queen  Anne  and  the 
first     George,   and     Prior,    Pope    and    Gay,    Swift, 

Addison  and  Steele  are   the  principal   names.      The 
185 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

historians  of  German  literature,  lastly,  call  it  by  a 
still  more  expressive  name,  die  Periode  der  Original- 
genies ;  it  extends  usually  from  Wieland  and  Herder 
to  Novalisand  the  two  Schlegels. 

In  France,  with  all  deference  to  those  who  are 
troubled  by  the  memory  of  such  greatness,  it  is  the 
age  of  Louis  XIV.  The  forty  or  fifty  years  of  our 
history  crowded  with  the  work  of  La  Fontaine, 
Moliere,  Racine,  and  Boileau  on  the  one  hand,  and, 
on  the  other,  of  La  Rochefoucauld,  Madame  de 
Sevigne,  Pascal,  and  Bossuet,  are  as  the  noon  of  a 
great  day,  whose  dawn  had  been  announced  by  the 
work  of  Rabelais  and  Montaigne,  and  whose  decline 
was  yet  to  see  the  appearance  of  the  work  of  Diderot 
and  Rousseau.  Nobody,  I  think,  will  dispute  that 
the  language  of  the  author  of  the  Essays  or  of  the 
author  of  Gargantua  is  far  separated  from  the  lan- 
guage of  which  the  Maxims  and  the  Provinciates 
fixed  the  model.  It  will  not  be  denied,  too,  that  the 
ease  of  Madame  de  Sevigne  is  as  distant  from  the 
ordinary  awkwardness  of  Diderot  as  the  natural  elo- 
quence of  Bossuet  is  distant  from  the  studied  pomp 
of  Rousseau.  But  what  I  wish  to  add  is  that,  as  in 
comparison  with  Pascal  and  La  Rochefoucauld,  Mon- 
taigne is  still  quite  Latin  and  Rabelais  almost  quite 
Greek,  so  the  translator  of  Stanyan  and  Shaftesbury 
is  already  quite  English,  and  the  author  of  the  Nouvelle 
HUdise  and  i.mile  already  almost  German,  in  compari- 
son with  Bossuet  and  Madame  de  Sevigne.     Who,  on 

i86 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

the  contrary,  can  be  called  more  thoroughly  French 
than  Racine,  if  it  is  not  La  Fontaine,  and  who  more 
Parisian  even  than  Moliere,  if  it  is  not  Boileau  ? 
There  is  the  foundation  of  their  popularity,  of  the 
religion,  as  has  been  said,  which  we  always  profess 
for  them  :  they  are  French,  and  some  even  Gauls ; 
faithful  images  of  the  race,  bright,  simple,  and  precise 
like  it,  more  esteemed,  in  short,  than  loved,  appreci- 
ated, or  understood  by  foreigners.  Admirable  ex- 
amples, accordingly,  for  proving  what  we  have  just 
advanced — that  the  time  of  the  perfection  of  a  lan- 
guage is  measured  by  the  very  duration  of  its 
independence  of  foreign  languages. 

So  the  second  condition  doubles  in  a  way  and 
strengthens  the  first.  If  the  classic  value  of  a  work 
depends,  on  the  one  hand,  on  the  degree  of  advance- 
ment and  perfection  of  the  language,  it  depends,  on  the 
other  hand,  on  the  faithfulness  with  which  these  works 
interpret  the  national  spirit.  Now,  as  we  have  said, 
and  it  could  easily  be  proved,  it  is  just  when  they 
interpret  what  is  inmost  in  the  national  spirit  that 
languages  attain  their  point  of  perfection.  It  is  not 
then  enough  to  be  born  in  the  time  of  the  perfection 
of  a  language  to  become  a  classic  :  one  must  show 
himself  worthy  of  his  luck,  and,  for  example,  must  not 
have  employed  the  French  language  of  the  seventeenth 
century  in  the  imitation  of  Spanish  grandiloquence  or 
Italian  euphuism.     The  reader  who  is  anxious  to  carry 

the  proof  to  its  conclusion  will  easily  perceive  that  here 
187 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

again,  as  above,  the  generalisation  includes  the  classics 
of  painting  as  well  as  those  of  literature.  For,  as  there 
are  classics  of  Italian  painting,  there  are  also  of 
Flemish  and  Dutch  painting,  and  they  are  what  they 
are  exactly  from  the  same  reasons,  or,  in  other  words, 
under  the  same  conditions.  They  painted  during  the 
precise  time  of  the  perfection  of  the  technical  means 
of  their  art,  and,  what  is  more,  their  painting  expressed, 
with  forms  and  colours,  as  much  of  the  national 
character  as  it  could. 

This  is  not  all,  and  there  is  wanting  a  last  con- 
dition. Those  alone  really  are  classics,  in  the  full 
meaning  of  the  word,  who  can  join  to  the  good 
fortune  we  have  just  mentioned,  the  good  fortune  also 
of  having  lived  in  the  time  of  the  perfection  of  their 
literary  form.  For  the  forms,  too,  have  only  one 
time.  Like  languages  they  too  live,  and  when  they 
have  ended  living,  like  languages,  they  die.  When 
Shakespeare,  in  England,  and  his  contemporaries  or 
immediate  successors  had,  so  to  speak,  exhausted  all 
the  vitality  of  the  drama,  once  it  had  been  clearly  de- 
fined, in  vain  did  Dryden  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
and  Addison  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth, 
endeavour  to  renew  it  by  remodelling  it  on  French 
tragedy.  On  the  other  hand,  in  France,  it  was  useless 
for  Voltaire  to  flatter  himself,  in  the  incessant  search 
for  novelty — and  his  drama  has  at  least  the  merit  of 
being  a  very  interesting  proof  of  this — on  reviving  the 
tragedy  of  the  seventeenth  century  ;    Corneille  and 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

Racine  had  exhausted  all  the  power  of  that  dramatic 

form.    On  the  contrary,  on  both  sides  of  the  Channel, 

in  the  country  of  Le  Sage  as  in  that  of  Richardson, 

the  novel,  before  reaching  its  true  home,  had  been 

dragged  clumsily   from  adventure  to  adventure,  and 

had  barely  given  some  promise — in  the  Princesse  de 

Cleves  or  the  Roman  Com'tque — of  what  it  could  be, 

and  one  day  was  to  be.     This  is  why,  in  the  history 

of  our  literature  as  in  that  of  English  literature,  the 

classics  of  the  novel  belong  to  the  eighteenth  century. 

The  reason,  if  any  is  needed — for,  after  all,  it  might 

have  been  sufficient  to  have  here  noted  the  facts — is 

that  every  form  has  its  laws,  which  depend  much  less 

than  is  thought  on  the  changes  of  fashion  and  some 

or  other  supposed  revolution  in  taste.     The  prettiest 

theories  on  the  liberty  of  art  and  the  blending  of  the 

forms  will    never    make    us   seek  at    the  theatre  the 

same  emotion  we  seek  in  reading  a  book.     One  might 

as    well   say  that  the  same   pleasure,  and    the   same 

kind  of  pleasure,  is   derived  from  works  of  painting 

and  sculpture.     But,  evidently,  if  it  is  not  the  same 

pleasure  (and  everybody  will  admit  it),  the  means  of 

satisfying  it  cannot  be  the  same  ;  and,  once  this  single 

point  is  granted,  there  follow  from  it  the  laws,  rules, 

methods,  or  conditions  (the  word  is  of  no  consequence) 

which   determine  the  perfection  of  each  form.     And 

once  this  perfection  is  attained,  it  is  no  longer  possible 

to  surpass  it.     I  appear  to  be  saying  something  absurd. 

So   let    me   express   this    in    a   more   concrete    way. 

189 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

If  anyone,  like  Bossuet,  for  example,  has  once  attained 
the  perfection  of  the  funeral  oration,  it  will  not  be  given, 
in  the  French  language,  to  a  Bourdaloue,  or  a  Fenelon, 
or  a  Massillon,  even  though  classics  themselves,  to 
surpass  or  equal  Bossuet.  They  will  be  able  to  do 
otherwise,  according  to  the  saying  of  one  of  them,  but 
whatever  they  do  they  will  undoubtedly  do  less  well. 


IV 


When    these  three  conditions  concur,  or,  as   is  said, 

converge,  it  is  then   that  classic  works  appear,  those 

alone  to  which,  in  the  history  of  literature  as  in  the 

history  of  art,  the  word  is  exactly  applicable.     That 

there  are  other  works  on  which  we  can  justly  exhaust 

all  our  expressions  of  admiration  matters  little  :  they 

are  not  classic  as  soon  as  one  or  other  of  these  three 

conditions    is   wanting.      The    famous   Jean-Baptiste 

Rousseau  has  for  long  been  counted  among  the  classics 

of  our   lyric    poetry ;    but    we    have   since    perceived 

that,  of  the  many  odes  and  cantatas  which  used  to  be 

praised,  there  is   not  one  which  is  truly  lyric,  that 

is  to  say,  which  vibrates  with   the  personal  emotion 

of  the  poet  ;  lyric  poetry  in  France  was  still  too  far 

away  from  the  perfection  of  its  form  :  Jean-Baptiste 

Rousseau  is  not  a  classic.     But  in  our  time,  on  the 

other   hand,  high  as  are  raised  the    Lamartines,  the 

190 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

Mussets,  and  the  Hugos,  no  more  are  they  classics, 
and  never  will  they  be  :  they  are  too  far  away  from  the 
time  of  the  perfection  of  the  language,  and  foreign 
literatures  have  left  too  deep  a  mark  on  them.  Certain 
songs  of  Beranger,  who  is  less  literary  in  every  respect, 
and  moreover  hardly  a  poet,  but  Gallic  in  spirit,  are 
nearer  the  classic  form. 

I  have  evidently  chosen  this  last  example  purposely. 
For  there  are  few  which  prove  more  clearly  how  far 
the  true  notion  of  a  classic  can  be  immaterial,  and  in 
some  way  exterior,  to  any  judgment  on  the  individual 
worth  of  the  writer.  We  are  accustomed  in  our  day 
— and  many  clever  people  are  not  far  from  finding  in 
it  the  last  word  of  criticism — to  confound  the  works 
with  the  writers,  as  if  there  were  not  masterpieces 
in  the  history  of  literature  or  art  whose  author  was  a 
downright  fool,  or  as  if  it  were  difficult  to  cite  ab- 
solutely mediocre  works  from  the  hand  of  a  man  of 
vast  intelligence.  The  worth  of  a  man  is,  however, 
one  thing ;  the  worth  of  a  work  is  another.  There 
may  be  an  entire  agreement  and  similarity  between 
the  man  and  his  work  :  there  can,  on  the  contrary, 
be  dissimilarity  and  contradiction.  The  work  may 
then  be  classic,  and  so,  in  certain  respects,  superior  to 
that  which  we  do  not  honour  with  the  same  name, 
but  the  man  may  be  very  inferior  (I  mean  in  originality 
of  intellect)  to  him  whose  work  will  never  be  classic. 
It  has  chanced  in  the  history  of  our  literature  that 

the  classic  epoch  was  at  the  same  time  that  of  some  of 

191 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

the  greatest  men  we  can  name.  But  it  could  be 
otherwise.  And,  indeed,  it  is  otherwise  in  the  history 
of  English  literature,  where  the  truly  classic  poets,  of 
whom  the  most  illustrious  is  Pope,  are  inferior  in 
every  point,  except  the  privilege  of  the  time  in  which 
they  lived,  to  those  who  preceded  them,  as  Dryden  per- 
haps, Milton,  and  Shakespeare,  or  to  those  who  followed 
them,  as  Wordsworth,  Byron,  and  Shelley. 

There  is  nothing  more  difficult  to  understand,  nor 
more  troublesome  to  the  literary  historian,  than  the 
question  whether  there  is  included  under  the  name  of 
classic  the  idea  of  a  personal  superiority  of  the  artist  or 
writer.  What,  on  the  other  hand,  more  simple,  if,  as 
I  have  tried  to  show,  the  man  who  is  really  a  classic 
is  in  some  way  so  in  spite  of  himself,  just  as  there 
are  so  many  people  who,  thank  heaven,  keep  in  good 
health  without  any  other  care  than  that  of  letting 
themselves  live  ?  We  recall  the  well-known  saying 
of  Courier :  "  The  merest  empty-headed  woman  at 
this  time  (the  age  of  Louis  XIV)  had  more  influence 
on  the  language  than  a  Jean- Jacques  and  a  Diderot." 
But  there  is  not  the  slightest  doubt  that  this  saying 
never  meant,  either  to  Courier  or  to  anybody  else, 
that  the  Memoirs  of  Madame  de  Lafayette,  or  the 
Souvenirs  of  Madame  de  Caylus,  was  a  greater  event 
in  the  history  of  the  human  mind  than  the  Contrat 
socialy  for  example,  or  that  voluminous  but  perfectly 
unreadable  Encyclopadia.  Only,  the  "  merest  empty- 
headed  woman  "  of  that  time  was  of  that  time,  and 

192 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

that  time  was  the  time  of  the  perfection  of  the 
national  language,  and  when  Jean-Jacques  and  Diderot 
came  it  was  passed,  and  neither  their  power  nor  even 
that  of  a  greater  was  able  to  restore  it.  There  is 
the  chief  point,  there  the  essential  element  in  the 
definition  of  a  classic.  The  classics  are  writers  who 
live  in  a  given  time,  which,  in  the  history  of  every 
literature  as  of  every  art,  is  given  by  the  conjunction 
of  the  general  conditions  which  we  have  endeavoured 
to  determine,  and  these  conditions  are  given  in  their 
turn  by  general  events  of  history.  When  these  con- 
ditions are  not  yet  fully  realised — from  reasons  ysrhich 
vary  with  each  art  and  in  each  literature — the  time 
has  not  yet  come.  When  these  conditions  begin  to 
fail,  and,  so  to  speak,  to  lose  the  power  which  they 
exercised,  the  time  is  past.  But,  reciprocally,  as  long 
as  it  lasts,  the  works  which  are  born,  as  it  were,  under 
the  conjunction  of  these  three  conditions  are  properly 
what  we  agree  to  call  classics.  If  the  high  personal 
worth  of  an  artist  is  joined  to  them,  as  in  our  classic 
French  literature  and  in  German  classic  literature, 
so  much  the  better,  and  the  works  are,  perhaps,  more 
classic  ;  but  they  are  not  less  classic  if,  as  in  English 
literature  and  in  Italian  literature,  poets  and  prose 
writers  are  lacking  in  an  originality  which  may  be 
noted  before  their  time  and  will  be  noted  after  them  ; 
and  this  is  the  point  which  must  be  emphasised. 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

V 

M.  Deschanel's  book  is  a  clever  attempt  to  establish 
a  new  relation  between  these  three  terms — roman- 
ticism, literary  revolution,  and  classicism.  What  the 
attempt  is  worth,  and  how  far  it  has  succeeded,  we 
shall  be  able  to  say  presently.  We  have  only  to  see, 
indeed,  what  becomes  of  M.  Deschanel's  theory  when 
the  generic  word  classics  is  replaced,  in  his  definition 
of  romanticism,  as  in  his  idea  of  literary  revolutions, 
by  the  definition  we  have  just  given. 

First  of  all  it  is  clearly  evident  that  if  certain  classic 
authors  were,  as  I  agree  with  M.  Deschanel,  bold  re- 
volutionaries— Moliere  and  Racine,  for  example,  with 
us,  or  Goethe  and  Schiller  in  Germany — it  is  neither 
as  classics  that  they  were  revolutionaries,  nor  as  re- 
volutionaries that  they  have  remained  classics  for  us. 
Had  they  been  more  timid  revolutionaries,  and  even 
had  they  done  nothing  at  all  by  way  of  reformation 
or  change  in  their  art,  they  would  be  classics  none 
the  less.  There  are  numerous  examples  to  prove 
this.  Thus,  in  the  history  of  the  French  drama, 
if  there  is  anyone  who  answers  to  the  average 
idea  of  a  classic,  it  is  assuredly  the  author  of  the 
Legataire  universel  or  the  Joueur^  and  I  think  we 
would  be  rather  embarrassed  to  say  what  revolution 
he  made.  But,  on  the  contrary,  there  are  many  others, 
each  of  whom  in  his  time  added  something  positively 
new   to   his  art,   La   Chaussee,  for   example,  the  in- 

194 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

ventor  of  the  "  comedie  larmoyante,"  or  Diderot, 
the  inventor  of  the  "tragedie  bourgeoise,"  who  are 
incontestably  not  classics.  Similarly,  in  the  history 
of  French  prose,  to  whom  shall  we  give  the  name  of 
classic,  if  not  to  the  author  of  the  Histoire  de  Charles 
XII  and  the  Steele  de  Louis  XIV?  But  who  on  the 
other  hand  is  not  of  opinion,  on  comparing  him  with 
the  author  of  the  Nouvelle  Helo'ise  and  the  Confessions^ 
that  the  second  is  the  innovator,  and  the  less  classic  ? 
And  likewise,  too,  in  the  history  of  French  poetry, 
to  take  names  nearer  our  time,  if  Victor  Hugo  is 
assuredly  the  revolutionary,  must  we  not  admit  that 
Alfred  de  Musset  is  unquestionably  much  nearer  the 
common  idea  of  a  classic  ? 

It  is  quite  possible  then,  that,  there  are  sometimes 
the  meeting  and  concurrence  in  a  great  writer,  as  in 
Moliere  or  Racine,  Pascal  or  Bossuet,  of  the  boldness 
which  makes  the  innovator,  and  the  perfection  which 
makes  the  classic.  But  it  is  the  exception.  And  in 
any  case,  if  we  have  introduced  into  our  definition  of 
a  classic  all  it  should  contain,  and  nothing  but  what 
it  should  contain,  not  only  is  it  not  enough,  but  it  is 
also  useless  to  "  innovate  "  in  order  to  become  a  classic. 
I  shall  not  waste  time  in  showing  that  the  converse  is 
true,  and  that  it  is  plainly  not  enough  to  be  counted 
among  the  classics  to  have  made  many  innovations. 
But  it  should  at  least  be  shown  that  in  the  case  of 
Corneille  or  Moliere,  the  innovations  for  which  M. 
Deschanel  took  delight  in  praising  them  are  un- 
'95 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

doubtedly  the  least  classic  thing  in  their  work,  and 

in  them. 

Some  one  has  made  bold  to  say — it  is  M.  Guizot, 

I   think — of  the  great  Corneille  himself,  that  he   is 

not  a  classic.     Without  going  quite  so  far,  it  is  certain 

that   neither  his  work  as  a  whole  is  classic,  nor    his 

masterpieces  themselves  classic  in  all  their  parts.     M. 

Deschanel,  however,  does   not   seem  to   doubt  for  a 

moment  that,  if  there  is  a  classic  in  the  history  of  our 

literature,  it  is  the  author  of  N'lcornede  and  Don  Sanche 

cC Aragon.     And  what  he  chiefly  admires  in   Corneille 

is  doubtless  to  a  certain  extent  what  everybody  admires, 

but  it  is  above  all,  as  he  says,  "  the  painting  of  human 

life  in  its  complexity  and  divers  aspects,  now  exalted, 

now  reduced,  by  means  of  these  mixed  dramas,  at  once 

familiar  and  heroic,  and  also  of  these  expressions  taken 

from  the  common  language  of  everyday  life,  which 

often  surprise  but  are  none  the  less  just  and  true "  ; 

and  this  is  what  he  calls  expressly  the  romanticism  of 

Corneille.     Now  even  admitting,  which  is  not  the 

case,  that  Corneille  made  a  revolution  in  bringing  on 

to  the  stage  this  "  mixed  drama,  at  once  heroic  and 

familiar,"  it  is  just  because  he  was  too  often  unable 

to  separate    these  two  elements,    the  heroic  and  the 

familiar,  which   cross   and    combat   and   injure   each 

other   in    his   work,   that   he   has   not   succeeded    in 

reaching  the  classic  perfection   of  his  form.     In  the 

same   way    also   it   is   precisely    from   abounding   in 

"expressions   taken    from   the   common   language   of 

196 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

everyday  life,"  and  which  almost  everywhere,  when 
they  are  not  in  dreadful  contradiction  with  the  senti- 
ment the  poet  means  to  express  or  the  effect  he  means 
to  produce,  jar  on  his  naturally  pompous  language, 
that  Corneille  has  not  attained  the  classic  perfection 
of  language  and  of  the  art  of  writing  in  verse.  He  is 
therefore  romantic  in  so  far  as  he  is  not  classic,  and 
not,  as  M.  Deschanel  would  hold,  classic  in  so  far  as 
he  had  been  romantic.  Need  we  go  further  ?  It 
would  be  possible.  I  should  be  tempted  to  say,  indeed, 
that  Corneille  is  classic  from  his  good  qualities  and 
romantic  from  his  faults.  But  the  example  which  M. 
Deschanel  has  chosen  in  Molidre  is  the  best  proof  of 
the  paradox  I  could  wish. 

"  Let  us  admit  at  once,"  he  says,  "  that  Moliere's 
Don  yuariy  though  very  remarkable  in  many  respects, 
especially  from  the  point  of  view  of  our  present 
subject,  is  yet,  to  say  the  word,  a  little  patched  up, 
not  very  well  put  together,  mixed  up  of  incongruous 
elements,  but  nevertheless  extremely  romantic." 
We  are  entirely  in  accord  with  M.  Deschanel  on 
this  point.  It  is  not  only  the  three  unities  which 
Moliere  violated  in  his  Don  Juan;  the  unity  of 
the  character  and  of  the  type  of  the  principal  person- 
age is  strangely  disfigured  in  each  successive  act. 
Nobody  is  unaware,  further,  that  the  piece  was  com- 
posed for  the  occasion,  and,  while  admirable  at  cer- 
tain  places  where   the    hand  of  Moliere   regains   its 

cunning,  was  wretchedly  written,  and  for  the  purpose 
197 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

of  turning  to  account,  for  the  greater  profit  of  the 
theatre  till,  a  subject  with  which  the  public  was  so 
keenly  smitten,  that,  between  1659  ^"^  ^^^7i  "o^ 
speaking  of  that  which  was  acted  by  the  Italians, 
we  have  no  less  than  four  dramatic  readings  of  Festin 
de  Pierre.  Need  I  say  that  the  unities  are  violated 
in  the  three  others  with  the  same  violence  as  in  that 
of  Moliere  ?  But  if  it  was  enough  to  advertise  a 
Festin  de  Pierre  to  attract  the  public,  where,  we  ask, 
was  Moliere's  "  innovation  "  ?  We  ask,  too,  where 
was  his  "romanticism,"  since,  in  the  three  or  four 
other  Don  Juans^  changes  of  scenery,  variety  of  in- 
cidents, and  stage-tricks  are  also  to  be  found.  We 
are  thus  reduced  to  the  conclusion  that  the  most 
"romantic"  element  in  Moliere's  Don  "Juan  is  its 
incoherence,  its  incongruity,  its  absolute  lack  of 
unity,  all  eminently  romantic,  I  admit,  but  assuredly 
very  little  classical.  Moliere's  romanticism  in  his  Don 
yuan  consists  in  his  Don  yuan  being  prodigiously 
inferior  to  his  classic  masterpieces. 

Is  this  enough  to  entitle  us  to  inscribe  Corneille 
or  Moliere  among  the  precursors  of  romanticism  ? 
If  not,  the  discussion  is  closed  and  the  case  is  heard. 
But  if  it  is,  we  must  then  impose  on  ourselves  a  de- 
finition of  romanticism,  which,  far  from  agreeing  in 
any  point  with  the  definition  of  classicism,  would 
now  oppose  it  in  absolute  contradiction. 

Indeed,  he  who  talks  about  perfection — perfection 

of  the  language    or  perfection  of  a    form — evidently 

198 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

implies  separation,  distinction,  and  choice.  The  per- 
fection of  a  language  is  constituted  by  the  choice, 
among  all  the  forms  that  can  serve  equally  well  for  the 
expression  of  the  same  thought,  of  the  only  form 
that  is  suitable  to  the  time,  the  circumstances,  and 
the  subject.  All  the  others  fall,  one  alone  remains 
and  survives.  The  language  of  Corneille,  in  his  poor 
passages,  is,  with  just  a  little  more  force  and  happiness 
of  expression,  the  language  of  Mairet  and  Scuderi ;  in 
his  good  passages,  it  is  the  same  language,  purged 
only  of  its  excess  of  grandiloquence  and  preciosity  : 
and  it  is  the  classic  language.  Similarly  the  perfec- 
tion of  a  form  is  constituted  by  the  choice,  among  all 
the  forms  that  could  almost  equally  well  have  been 
used,  of  the  form  most  sure  to  suit  the  end  in  view. 
All  the  others  are  more  or  less  suitable,  but  only  one 
among  them  all  is  more  suitable  than  the  others. 
Thus,  in  the  dramatic  system  of  the  three  unities, 
every  means  that  can  serve  for  the  concentration  of 
the  action  is  one  step  accomplished  towards  the  per- 
fection of  the  form — the  comedy  of  Moliere  or  the 
tragedy  of  Racine.  Now,  from  this  very  choice, 
there  necessarily  results  an  elimination  of  all  the  other 
forms.  These  other  forms  may  be  adopted,  they  may 
be  worked  up,  and  they  may  sometimes  be  successful. 
And  this  is  romanticism,  but  it  is  classicism  no  longer. 
It  remains  for  me  to  show  this  briefly,  and  that 
our  admiration  for  the  great  writers  of  former  times 

and  for  those  of  to-day,   far    from    being    derived,  as 

199 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

M.  Deschanel  holds,  from  the  "same  source  and  the 
same  causes,"  is  derived,  on  the  contrary,  from  the 
most  contrary  causes  and  the  most  different  source 
possible.  Romanticism  is  no  random  revolution,  but 
a  revolution  to  restore  to  honour  all  that  classicism 
had,  if  not  dogmatically  condemned,  at  least  effect- 
ually rejected.  I  speak  of  the  classics  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  and  not  of  the  pseudo-classics  of  the 
Empire. 

In  the  matter  of  language,  in  the  first  place,  and 
under  the  specious  enough  pretext  of  restoring  its 
ancient  liberty,  romanticism  neglected  nothing  that 
could  possibly  make  it  fall  from  the  point  of  perfec- 
tion to  w^hich  the  classics  had  carried  it.  Excess  leads 
to  excess,  I  am  not  unaw^are.  The  so-called  philo- 
sophical grammarians  of  the  eighteenth  century  had 
w^eakened  the  language  to  such  an  extent  that  it  was 
absolutely  necessary  to  give  it  a  little  body  or  to  cease 
to  write.  But  the  error  of  romanticism,  animated  as 
it  was  by  a  hatred  of  all  the  classics  without  distinc- 
tion, by  a  stupid  hatred,  was  to  leap,  so  to  speak,  over 
the  seventeenth  century,  and  to  carry  us  back  to  the 
period  of  perhaps  the  worst  disorder  and  the  greatest 
confusion  of  the  language.  If  it  was  not  declared  in 
precise  terms,  it  was  thought,  in  the  cenacle  of  the 
romanticists,  that  Racine  wrote  badly  in  comparison 
with  Du  Bartas,  and  that  Corneille  himself,  though 
often  emphatic,  and  occasionally  even  somewhat  low, 

was  really  only  a  schoolboy  in  comparison  with  Baif  and 

200 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

Jodelle.  Thus  was  lost  the  benefit  of  the  purification 
which  the  language  had  undergone,  from  various  in- 
fluences, at  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
and  which  perhaps  we  may  be  said  not  to  have  yet 
recovered.  ...  I  merely  indicate  here  the  develop- 
ment. Every  question  relative  to  the  state  of  a 
language,  in  any  period  of  its  history,  exacts  too 
cumbersome  an  equipment  of  examples  and  proofs 
to  be  treated  in  passing. 

It  will  be  easier  to  show  that  romanticism  was 
mistaken  in  a  like  manner  as  to  the  reformation, 
though  that  also  was  necessary,  of  tragedy.  A  single 
question  suffices.  Where  is  the  drama — a  synthesis 
at  once  of  the  comedy  of  Moliere  and  the  tragedy  of 
Racine — where  is  the  drama  which  the  romantic  Pre- 
faces promised  us  so  solemnly  ?  Is  it  Le  Roi  C amuse  ? 
Is  it  Les  BurgraveSy  perhaps  ?  Is  it  Henri  III  et  sa 
Cour?  Is  it  Christine^  ou  Stockholm^  FontainebleaUy  et 
Rome?  The  truth  is  that  if  the  romanticists 
understood  that  the  time  of  the  tragedy  of  Corneille 
and  Racine  was  past,  they  did  not  understand  that 
the  time  was  still  further  past,  if  I  may  say  so,  of 
the  drama  of  Shakespeare  and  Lope  de  Vega.  '*  The 
Cid  entered  on  the  true  way,  on  the  modern  way," 
says  M.  Deschanel,  "that  of  the  drama^  under  the 
name  of  tragi-comedy."  I  shall  ask  him  then  what 
he  thinks  we  have  met  in  this  way  during  the  nearly 
eighty  years  since  "  the  absurd  tyranny  of  the  three 

unities"  has  ceased  to  dominate  the  French  theatre 
201 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

and  to  trammel  the  liberty  of  an  Alexandre  Dumas 
and  a  Victor  Hugo.  For  I  consider  that  of  the  two 
poets  whom  I  name,  the  former,  Dumas,  had  in 
no  less  degree  than  Racine  himself  the  instinct  of 
dramatic  situation,  and  if  I  add  that  the  latter, 
Hugo,  is  no  less  a  poet  than  Corneille,  M.  Des- 
chanel,  no  doubt,  will  not  contradict  me. 

Would  this  not  simply  mean  that  this  form  of  the 
drama,  as  well  in  the  nineteenth  as  the  seventeenth 
century,  does  not  agree  with  the  national  spirit  ? 
What  happened  in  England  when  Dryden  and 
Addison  attempted  to  acclimatise  French  tragedy  in 
the  land  of  Shakespeare,  happened  with  us  when  we 
tried  to  accommodate  to  the  French  temperament 
the  drama  of  Shakespeare.  It  is  really  not  very 
philosophical  to  regret  that  Corneille  or  Racine 
was  not  Shakespeare,  and  to  throw  on  four  poor 
old  pedants  who  are  now  forgotten  the  responsi- 
bility of  what  is  deliberately  called  the  "  archaeo- 
logical, artificial,  and  composite  character "  of  our 
French  drama.  Why  not  rather  be  content  with 
being  what  one  is,  and  not  affect  this  silly  regret 
for  not  being  English  or  Spanish  ?  For  the  whole 
matter  lies  there.  The  question  of  the  three  unities 
was  discussed  by  the  English  too.  Ben  Jonson,  the 
great  rival  of  Shakespeare,  upheld  the  rule  of  twenty- 
four  hours  no  less  ardently  than  an  Abbe  d'Aubignac 
himself.      The    English    chose    liberty ;    the    French 

preferred  rule.      Liberty  is   good,  but   rule   is  good 
202 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

also.  'Julim  Casar  is  a  fine  drama ;  Bajazet  is  not  a 
bad  tragedy.  The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  is  one 
of  the  most  humorous  pieces ;  Tartufe  may  pass  as 
a  good  enough  comedy.  Shakespeare  is  English, 
Racine  is  French,  Warwickshire  is  not  Champagne, 
and  Paris  is  not  London  :  what  would  you  have 
them  do  ? 

The  romanticists  believed  that  they  would  do  some- 
thing, and,  victims  of  this  generous  illusion,  they 
frankly  threw  themselves  headlong  into  the  imitation 
of  foreign  literatures.  This  abandonment  of  the 
national  tradition  is  not  what  separates  them  the 
least  profoundly  from  our  classics.  Spain,  Italy, 
Germany,  England  (with  its  colonies) — where,  to 
what  country  of  the  habitable  world  have  they  not 
gone  to  seek  motives  of  inspiration  ?  But  what 
have  they  brought  back,  for  the  most  part,  but 
tinsel  and  spangle,  local  colour,  as  they  said,  oddities, 
monstrosities  above  all,  when  they  had  the  luck  to 
meet  with  them,  but  nothing  solid,  nothing  durable, 
nothing  that  could  stand,  nothing  truly  English,  and 
with  better  reason,  as  may  be  thought,  nothing  truly 
French  ? 

I  do  not  mean  to  examine  in  this  connection  the 

question   if  here  are  not   to    be   found   the  signs   of 

the  future  formation  of  a  European  literature.     This 

literature  existed   in    the  Middle  Ages.      And   from 

one  end  of  civilised  Europe  to  the  other,  under  the 

law  of  Christianity,  ideas   and   sentiments  were  ex- 
203 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

changed,  thanks  to  Latin,  it  is  true,  in  a  form  which 
was  neither  French,  English,  Spanish,  nor  German. 
Modern  nationalities  were  then  in  what  might  be 
called  a  state  of  indecision.  It  is  quite  possible  that 
peoples,  who  are  now  less  strictly  confined  within 
their  frontiers,  are  about  to  lose  the  traits  which 
characterise  them  as  peoples,  in  the  same  way  that 
by  exchange  of  communication  our  old  provinces 
have  lost  something  of  their  former  originality.  The 
time  seems  to  be  approaching  when  literary  work 
will  no  longer  betray  its  national  origin  but  by 
touches  singularly  delicate  and  difficult  to  distinguish. 
But,  once  again,  I  am  forgetting.  We  are  not  deal- 
ing with  romanticism  in  itself,  nor  in  its  conse- 
quences, but  with  romanticism  in  its  connection  with 
classicism,  and  the  formula  for  it  which  M.  Deschanel 
has  proposed.  And  if  we  have  defined  the  classics 
correctly,  it  is  evident  that  there  is  absolutely  nothing 
more  unlike  a  romanticist  than  a  classic. 

They  are  precisely  at  the  two  poles  of  the  history 
of  our  national  literature.  We  can  admire  them  in 
their  turn,  we  even  must,  if  we  have  *  breadth  of 
sympathy,'  that  fine  phrase  for  what  after  all  is  little 
else  than  indifference  ;  we  can  hardly  admire  them 
together,  no  more  than  we  can  admire  at  the  same 
time  the  regularity  of  '  good  sense '  and  the  riot  of 
imagination,  perfection  in  rhythm  and  indifference 
to  canon  ;  but  we  cannot  by  an  means  admire  them 

from  the  same  reasons  j  or  they  are  then  so  general 
204 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

that  they  cannot  truly  be  called  reasons.  If  every 
kind  of  painting  or  every  kind  of  music  interests  the 
same  senses,  the  one  the  eyes  and  the  other  the  ear, 
shall  vv^e  say  on  that  account  that  our  admiration  is 
derived  from  the  same  source  and  the  same  causes  ? 
It  is  with  the  eyes  that  I  admire  a  Madonna  of 
Raphael,  and  it  is  w^ith  the  eyes  that  I  admire  a 
Kermesse  of  Rubens  :  only  the  wrhole  question  is  the 
particular  nature  of  my  admiration. 

We  cannot  conclude  and  take  leave  of  M.  Des- 
chanel  without  thanking  him  for  the  opportunity 
he  has  given  us  of  discussing  a  question  whose  stimu- 
lating interest  we  would  like  to  have  made  the 
reader  recognise.  I  shall  not  assume  that  in  a  sub- 
ject such  as  this  it  matters  little  whether  or  not  we 
are  of  accord  :  I  have  the  weakness  to  believe  that, 
on  the  contrary,  it  matters  a  good  deal.  But  it 
matters  much  more  still  that  literary  criticism  and 
literary  history,  instead  of  proceeding,  as  M.  Des- 
chanel  has  said,  from  its  first  chapter  and  its  first 
lecture  "  to  sink  purely  and  simply  in  the  quicksands 
of  philology,"  should  sometimes  think  also  of  awaken- 
ing ideas.  Herein  lies  the  value  of  M.  Deschanel's 
book.  An  idea  dominates  the  subject.  The  facts 
are  of  no  value  in  themselves,  but  only  in  so  far  as 
they  help  to  demonstrate  the  idea.  The  digressions, 
too,  by  a  deviation  which  is  sometimes  rather  long, 
but   always   easily  followed,   lead   back  and    link   on 

to  the  idea.      And  whether  we   have  the  better  of 
205 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

M.  Deschanel,  or  M.  Deschanel  the  better  of 
us,  such  books  do  more  good  to  those  who  read 
them  than  the  very  bulky  and  withal  very  estim- 
able works,  which  doubtless  pretend  to  greater 
erudition. 


206 


IMPRESSIONIST    CRITICISM 

When  a  man  himself  follows  the  profession  or  business 
of  criticism,  it  is  always  easy — and  sometimes  tempt- 
ing— to  oppose  his  opinion  to  that  of  his  colleagues, 
to  praise  the  novel  they  condemn,  and  find  feult  with 
the  writer  they  admire  ;  but  it  is  not  so  easy  to  assume 
the  airs  of  judging  them  themselves  and  to  affect 
in  this  way  a  sort  of  superiority  over  them.  This 
smacks,  as  the  phrase  goes,  of  the  pedantry  of  the 
schools.  But  what  is  much  more  difficult  still,  and 
may  reasonably  appear  rather  presumptuous,  is  to  re- 
proach them  with  understanding  their  science  or  their 
art  badly  because  they  understand  it  differently  than  we 
do,  to  dare  to  tell  them  so,  and  to  claim,  in  short,  that 
their  way  of  thinking  should  yield  to  and  coincide  with 
ours.  Yet  we  must  do  so  :  in  the  first  place,  that 
we  may  not  be  imposed  upon — the  most  unpardonable 
thing  in  the  world  in  this  age  of  Americanism  ;  and 
further,  because  in  this  kind  of  quarrel,  as  we  shall  see 
immediately,  questions  of  persons  include  questions  of 
principles.  Born  before  us  and  destined  to  survive  us, 
criticism  would  have  been  dead  long  ago,  had  it  not  an 

object,  a  role,  and  a  function,  exterior  and  superior  to 

207 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

the  idea  formed  of  it  by  M.  Anatole  France,  M.  Jules 
Lemaitre,  M.  Paul  Desjardins,  and  some  others  whom 
I  could  mention — and  myself. 

Need  I  say  that  I  have  the  greatest  respect  for  M. 
Anatole  France,  for  his  kindly,  ironical,  and  dainty 
manner,  where  such  subtle  thoughts  are  so  prettily 
veiled,  with  such  elegance,  indifference,  and  sometimes 
even  negligence  ?  I  have  hardly  less  respect  for 
M.  Jules  Lemaitre  ;  and,  with  all  Paris,  I  enjoy,  as 
I  well  may,  his  learned  pranks,  where  so  much  sim- 
plicity, and  ingenuousness  even,  is  always  allied  to  so 
much  wit,  and  sometimes  so  much  sense.  His  master- 
piece is  perhaps  the  funeral  oration  on  Victorine 
Demay— of  the  *  Concert  d'Horloge '  or  the  '  Am- 
bassadeurs ' — and  the  account  he  has  left  us  of  the 
interview  of  the  popular  singer  with  the  learned  author 
of  the  General  and  Comparative  History  of  Semitic 
Languages.  Nobody,  moreover,  writes  better  than  he 
does,  in  a  style  more  lively,  more  supple,  and  more 
full  of  surprises  :  he  plays  with  words,  he  does  what  he 
likes  with  them,  he  juggles  with  them.  And  I  esteem 
also  M.  Paul  Desjardins  for  his  anxious  care,  his  good 
will,  his  studied  endeavour  to  be  agreeable  to  those  he 
likes,  for  the  touching  sadness  with  which  he  tells 
them  the  most  unpleasant  things.  But,  with  all  their 
talent,  I  am  afraid  they  may  manage  to  lead  criticism 
into  a  grievous  path,  and  if  I  see  great  difficulties 
in  it,  why  should  I  not  point  them  out  ?     I  like  all 

three  very  much,  but  I  still  prefer  criticism ;  and  I 
208 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

do  not  think  they  will  be  annoyed  at  it,  and  the  reader 
will  commend  me  for  it. 

M.  Paul  Desjardins  said  this  just  the  other  day,  in 
reference  to  M.  Taine  ;  and  M.  Jules  Lemaitre  has 
said  this  twenty  times  if  he  has  said  it  once  ;  but  it 
is  perhaps  M.  Anatole  France,  in  an  article  on  M. 
Jules  Lemaitre,  who  has  most  energetically  claimed 
for  criticism  the  right  of  being  henceforth  only 
personal,  impressionist,  and,  as  is  said,  subjective. 
"  Objective  criticism  does  not  exist  any  more  than 
objective  art,  and  all  those  who  are  pleased  to  think 
they  put  something  else  than  themselves  into  their 
work  are  dupes  of  the  most  fallacious  philosophy.  The 
truth  is  we  can  never  come  out  of  ourselves.  It  is 
one  of  our  greatest  misfortunes.  What  would  we  not 
give  to  see,  for  one  minute,  the  skies  and  the  earth 
with  the  facet-eye  of  a  fly,  or  to  understand  nature 
with  the  rude  and  simple  brain  of  an  orang-outang  ? 
But  this  is  quite  forbidden  us.  We  are  shut  up  in  our 
personality  as  in  a  perpetual  prison.  The  best  thing 
we  can  do,  it  seems  to  me,  is  to  recognise  this  sorry 
condition  with  a  good  grace  and  to  admit  that  we 
speak  of  ourselves  every  time  we  have  not  the  strength 
to  hold  our  tongue."  It  would  really  be  impossible  to 
insinuate  more  cleverly  anything  more  "  fallacious," 
to  confuse  with  greater  adroitness  ideas  which  are 
more  distinct,  and,  in  short,  to  affirm  with  greater 
assurance  that  there  is  nothing  assured. 

That  this  manner  of  understanding  criticism  has, 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

moreover,  great  advantages,  I  do  not  deny.  It  allows, 
or  rather  it  authorises,  every  compliance  and  every 
contradiction.  The  *  relativity  '  of  changing  impres- 
sions explains  everything  and  answers  everything.  In 
giving  us  its  opinions  not  as  true,  but  as  *  its  own,' 
impressionist  criticism  provides  itself  with  a  means  of 
changing  them,  which  we  know  it  does  not  abstain 
from  using.  It  dispenses  accordingly  with  studying 
the  books  it  talks  about  or  the  subjects  those  books 
treat,  and  this  is  sometimes  a  considerable  gain. 
"  Need  I  endeavour  to  tell  you  the  impression  I  felt 
on  reading  the  second  volume  of  the  History  of  the 
People  of  Israel  P^^  asked  M.  Anatole  France  a  short 
time  ago.  "  Need  I  show  you  the  state  of  my  mind 
when  I  dreamt  between  its  pages  ? "  And,  without 
awaiting  our  reply — for,  after  all,  we  others,  officers 
of  the  199th  infantry,  or  merchants  of  the  Rue  du 
Sentier,  I  suppose,  and  good  people  of  Carpentras  or 
Landerneau,  why  should  we  be  so  curious  of  M. 
France's  state  of  mind  ? — M.  France  tells  us  that  while 
he  was  a  child  he  had  among  his  toys  "  a  Noah's  Ark, 
painted  red,  with  all  the  animals  in  pairs,  and  Noah 
and  his  children  most  beautifully  shaped."  If  the  pro- 
cess is  ingenious,  it  is  apparently  eminently  con- 
venient. Thanks  to  his  Noah's  Ark,  M.  Anatole 
France  found  it  quite  unnecessary  to  read  the  History 
of  the  People  of  Israel;  he  dreamt  between  the  pages 
of  the  book  ;  and,  as  he  is  M.  France,  he  spoke  of  it 

none  the  less  pleasantly. 

210 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

A  little  less  pleasantly,  if  we  must  be  sincere, 
but  in  the  same  manner  did  M.  Paul  Desjardins 
speak  the  other  day  about  the  fifth  volume  of  the 
Origins  of  Contemporary  France.  He  said  that  M. 
Taine  saw  Bonaparte  and  the  Revolution  with  the 
eyes  of  M.  Taine,  and  he  added,  or  at  least  gave  us 
to  understand,  that  his — Desjardins's — eyes  were  not 
those  of  M.  Taine,  and  he  described  another  Revolu- 
tion and  another  Bonaparte.  But  which  Bonaparte 
and  which  Revolution  ?  He  took  care  not  to  tell  us  ; 
and,  after  all,  why  did  he  not,  since  every  Revolution 
and  every  Bonaparte  is  equally  legitimate,  I  mean  to 
say  equally  true  ?  Would  it  not  be  amusing  if  M. 
Paul  Desjardins  has  an  opinion  on  Bonaparte  or  the 
Revolution  which  the  labours  of  M.  Taine  aimed 
at  obliging  him  to  change  ?  But  if  he  has  no 
opinion,  shall  we  require  that  he  should  find  one 
before  speaking  of  M.  Taine  or  his  book  ?  This  is 
yet  another  advantage  in  impressionist  criticism  :  it 
dispenses  with  conclusions,  ^ot  capita^  tot  sensus,  so 
said  the  rudiments  :  since  we  can  never  be  freed  from 
ourselves,  what  is  the  good  of  trying  ?  What  more 
useless  and  more  fatiguing  ?  What  more  fatiguing, 
since  it  is  undoubtedly  no  small  matter  to  form  a 
reasoned  opinion  on  the  Revolution  :  what  more  use- 
less, since  M.  Paul  Desjardins,  M.  Jules  Lemaitre, 
and  M.  Anatole  France  think  so,  and  since  we 
disguise  ourselves  to  no  purpose,  for  we  can  never 
express  anything  but  our  'personal  preferences.' 

211 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

But  I  should  have  liked  them  not  to  be  con- 
tent with  thinking  it  and  saying  it,  I  should  have 
liked  them  to  endeavour  to  prove  it :  for  this  they 
have  forgotten  to  do.  Metaphors  are  not  reasons. 
Assuredly  if  v/e  had  the  *  facet-eye  of  a  fly '  or  '  the 
rude  and  simple  brain  of  an  orang-outang,'  our 
vision  of  the  v^^orld  w^ould  be  different,  and  it  would 
be  above  all  less  complex  and  less  contradictory ; 
it  does  not  seem  to  be  proved  that  it  would  be  so 
different  as  it  appears  to  be  laid  down  in  theory, 
and  we  know,  for  example,  that  in  many  animals  the 
sensations  of  form  and  colour  are  similar  enough  to 
ours.  But  what  is  more  certain  still  is  that  we 
are  neither  flies  nor  orang-outangs ;  we  are  men, 
and  we  are  so  chiefly  from  the  power  we  have  of 
going  out  of  ourselves  to  seek  and  find  and  recognise 
ourselves  in  others.  Impressionist  or  subjective,  when 
criticism  borrows  arguments  from  metaphysics,  with- 
out even  taking  the  trouble  to  consider  their  bearing, 
it  forgets  that  the  value  of  these  arguments  is  purely 
metaphysical.  I  mean  to  say  that  we  may  well  discuss 
whether  colour  is  a  quality  of  coloured  objects  or  a 
mere  sensation  of  the  eyes  ;  but,  sensation  of  the  eyes 
or  quality  of  the  objects,  it  is  all  one  to  us,  and  of 
no  importance  ;  and,  in  one  case  as  in  the  other, 
things  happen  in  the  same  way.  Red  is  always  red, 
and  green  is  always  green.  Similarly,  if  what  is 
square  is  not  round,  what  is  round  is  not  square. 
Although    we    can    speak    of    the    relativity   of  our 

212 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

impressions  or  the  subjectivity  of  our  sensations,  the 
capacity  of  feeling  and  experiencing  them,  which  is 
alike  in  every  one  of  us  if  not  always  the  same,  and 
of  the  same  nature  if  not  the  same  degree,  is  one  of 
the  characteristics  of  the  species,  not  to  say  a  part  of 
the  definition  of  man.  So  let  us  leave  the  flies  and 
the  orang-outangs :  we  have  nothing  to  do  with 
them,  and  they  only  cause  confusion.  What  is  fal- 
lacious, let  us  say  so  in  our  turn,  is  to  misuse  words  so 
as  to  throw  us  ofF  the  scent  as  to  the  real  meaning 
of  things.  The  deception,  if  there  must  be  deception, 
is  to  believe  and  teach  that  we  cannot  come  out  of 
ourselves,  when,  on  the  contrary,  life  is  taken  up 
with  nothing  else.  And  the  reason  will  doubtless 
appear  strong  enough  if  we  take  into  account  that 
otherwise  there  would  be  neither  society,  language, 
literature,  nor  art. 

We  are  asked,  it  is  true,  where  then  arise  the 
difficulties  in  agreement,  and  how  does  it  come 
about  that  in  matters  of  art  and  literature  opinions 
are  so  varied  ?  For  they  seem  at  least  to  be  so : 
and,  to  say  nothing  of  our  contemporaries — whom 
we  agree  we  do  not  see  from  a  sufficient  distance  or 
height, — how  many  judgments,  how  many  diverse 
judgments,  have  been  given,  for  the  last  three  or 
four  hundred  years,  on  a  Corneille  or  a  Shakespeare, 
a  Cervantes  or  a  Rabelais,  a  Raphael  or  a  Michael 
Angelo  !     Just  as  there  is  no  extravagant  or  absurd 

opinion  that  some  philosopher  or  other  has  not  held, 
213 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

so  there  is  none  that  is  scandalous,  or  hostile  to  genius, 
that  cannot  find  authority  in  the  name  of  some  critic. 
Poets  and  novelists,  moreover,  have  not  been  treated 
any  better  by  themselves  :  Ronsard  abused  Rabelais, 
and  Corneille,  we  know^,  never  understood  Racine  : 
he  even  openly  declared  his  preference  for  Boursault. 
What  does  this  mean  but  that  we  are  shut  up  in  our 
personality  as  in  a  '  perpetual  prison,'  and  whatever 
effort  we  make  to  escape  from  it  wearies  us  and  con- 
fines us  the  more  closely. 

It  is  this  I  take  the  liberty  of  denying ;  and 
our  impressionist  critics  here  think  themselves  too 
original.  It  is  not  true  that  opinions  are  so  diverse, 
nor  diff^erences  so  deep.  "  Among  true  mandarins 
of  letters  " — the  phrase  is  M.  Jules  Lemaitre's — "  it 
is  agreed  that  such  writers,  whatever  may  be  their 
faults  or  their  manias,  exist^  as  is  said,  and  are 
worth  the  trouble  of  being  closely  examined."  Here 
is  the  first  point :  Racine  exists,  Voltaire  exists,  I 
mean  the  author  of  Za'ire^  Jlzire^  or  Tancrede ; 
Campistron  does  not  exist,  nor  the  Abbe  Leblanc, 
nor  M.  de  Jouy.  And  here  is  a  second  :  there 
are  degrees  between  Campistron  and  Voltaire,  there 
are  other  degrees  between  Zaire  and  Bajazet^  there 
are  degrees  everywhere,  and  there  is  nobody  who 
will  not  admit  it.  We  may  not  agree  as  to  the 
degrees.  We  may  scoff  at  those  who  *  fix  the  rank.' 
We   cannot    refuse    to   put  Victor   Hugo  above    M. 

Vacquerie,    Lamartine    above    Madame    Desbordes- 
214 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

Valmore,  Balzac  above  Charles  de  Bernard ;  and 
neither  M.  France,  nor  M.  Lemaitre,  nor  M. 
Desjardins  has  ever  tried  it,  or  ever  w^ill  try  it. 
And  to  these  two  points  I  add  a  third  :  '  faults ' 
or  *  manias,*  they  are  just  vi^hat  some  will  like 
in  Balzac  or  Hugo,  what  others  will  like  less, 
what  others  still  will  censure,  but  which  all  will 
recognise.  And,  even  when  it  is  a  contemporary 
writer,  look  at  what  M.  France  in  the  Temps^ 
M.  Lemaitre  in  the  Revue  bleue^  and  M.  Desjar- 
dins in  the  "Journal  des  Dkbats  have  said  of  the 
author  of  the  Reve  and  the  Bete  humaine ;  the 
whole  diflFerence  lies  in  what  they  have  unduly 
infused  of  their  personality,  of  the  expression  of  their 
personal  sympathies,  in  what  they  considered  they 
had  to  say  of  M.  Zola :  there  is  only  a  change 
of  words. 

But  I  am  wrong  in  saying  '  unduly.'  We  are 
not  capable  of  divesting  ourselves  so  completely  of 
our  own  personality,  that  nothing,  absolutely  nothing, 
of  ourselves  mingles  with  our  judgments.  We  are 
too  fond  of  ourselves  for  that  !  In  literature,  as 
in  everything,  we  go  to  those  who  flatter  us,  or 
who  we  believe  will  help  us.  I  wish  to  make  a 
larger  allowance  still  for  our  impressionists.  Literary 
opinion  is  the  complex  product  of  three  unequal 
terms.  In  a  literary  work,  poem,  drama,  or  novel, 
we  find  in  the  first  place  what  we  bring  to  it  of 
ourselves,  what  we  put  into  it  of  our  inmost  per- 
215 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

sonality  j    and,   in    this  sense,  as    has    been    said,  we 

make   its   beauty.      Some   take    greater    pleasure   in 

Candidcy   and    others   prefer    Paul  et   Firginie.     We 

find,  next,  what   their  admirers  or  critics  have  put 

into   it,    the    good    qualities   or    faults   which    time, 

alone,   in   its    imperceptible   course,    has   added,   and 

which  were  not  for  contemporaries.     Contemporaries 

did    not   see    in    the    Ecole    des    Femmes   or    Tartufe 

what   we   see,   and   with    good    reason,    for    Moliere 

did   not   think   of  it.       No    more    did    they   see    in 

Cleopdtre  or   the   Grand  Cyrus   the   tediousness,   the 

dulness,  the    insipidity    which    we    do,    for    they    did 

not    think   so   quickly,  they  read    more  slowly,  and 

they  were   less   refined.      But,  lastly,    must  we    not 

find  in  CUopdtre  and  Tartufe  and  Candide  something 

also   that  La  Calprenede   and  Moliere   and  Voltaire 

did  put  into   them  ?     No  matter  what  we  be,  who 

can  arouse  in  ourselves  fixed  impressions,  must  there 

not    be    in    Candide    and     Tartufe   some    qualities    to 

fix  them  or  arouse  them  ?     And  is  it  not  true  that 

these  qualities,  whatever   they   be  of  themselves,  are 

not  to  be  found  in  a  novel  of  the  younger  Crebillon 

or  in  a  comedy  of  Pojsson  or  Montfleury  ? 

This  is   all   that  is  necessary  to  establish   objective 

criticism.     When  we  have  got  a  clear  idea  of  the 

true  nature  of  our  impressions — which  is  not  always 

easy,   and   which    is    always   a  slow   matter :    when 

we    have    made    allowance,    which    is    much    more 

difficult   still,    for    prejudice,    for    education,    for    the 
2l6 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

age,  for  example  or  authority  in  our  impressions, 
there  remains  a  work,  a  man,  and  a  date.  This  is 
enough.  We  can  try  to  fix  this  date  exactly,  and 
determine  consequently  in  what  time,  at  what  moment 
of  literary  history,  in  what  social  surroundings,  amid 
what  circumstances  the  man  lived  and  the  work 
appeared.  We  can  try  to  say  what  the  man  was, 
what  kind  of  a  man,  sad  or  gay,  humble  or  of 
high  rank,  worthy  of  hate  or  admiration.  For 
generations  inherit,  more  than  they  believe,  from 
everything  that  has  preceded  them :  Nisard  loved 
to  say  that  the  most  living  thing  in  the  present, 
at  all  times,  is  the  past.  And  we  can  then  try, 
after  such  an  explanation,  to  classify  and  judge  this 
work.  This  is  the  whole  object  of  criticism.  What 
do  we  see  there  that  is  not  objective^  and  that  is  not 
or  cannot  be  independent  of  personal  tastes,  of  the 
private  sympathies  of  him  who  tries  to  explain, 
classify,  and  judge  ?  And  if  this  is  not  to  be  seen, 
or  if  it  cannot  be  mentioned,  what  remains  of  the 
insinuating  paradoxes  of  M.  Anatole  France,  the 
sparkHng  paradoxes  of  M.  Jules  Lemaitre,  and  the 
peevish  paradoxes  of  M.  Paul  Desjardins  ? 

Shall  I  here  insist  on  the  obligation  of  judging  ? 
Shall  I  remind  them  that  it  is  as  much  as  implied 
in  the  very  etymology  of  the  word  criticism  ?  Or 
shall  I  show  that  few  judges  at  this  very  day  are 
more  resolute  judges  than  our  impressionists  ?     The 

Contemporains  of  M.  Jules    Lemaitre  is  nothing  but 
217 


BRUNETlfiRE'S  ESSAYS 

a  collection  of  judgments — on  men,  it  is  true,  rather 
than  on  works — and  its  *  impressionism,*  after  all, 
consists  almost  only  in  the  malice  or  whimsicality 
of  the  motives  which  influence  them.  Who  then 
has  been  severer  and  harder — on  M.  George  Ohnet, 
for  example,  or  M.  Emile  Zola — than  the  sceptical, 
indulgent,  and  cheerful  M.  France  ?  *  Extravagance,' 
*  platitude,'  '  tediousness,'  '  wretched  rhapsodies,' 
'abominable  insipidities,'  M.  France  lost  that  day 
even  his  attic — or  rather  alexandrian  —  style,  on 
which  he  usually  piques  himself.  And  could  I  not 
cite  judgments  of  M.  Desjardins,  which,  though  less 
brilliant,  are  no  less  decisive  ?  Heaven  protect  me 
from  reproaching  them  for  these  judgments  !  I  do 
not  dislike  a  rhapsody  being  called  by  its  proper  name, 
nor  a  thought  being  freely  uttered.  In  literature, 
as  elsewhere,  it  would  only  be  for  the  better  if  this 
were  done  oftener,  and  more  boldly.  But  what  is 
this  affectation  of  pretending  not  to  judge  when 
one  really  does  judge,  of  giving  us  as  '  impressions ' 
judgments  which  our  conscience  tells  us  we  regard 
as  such,  and,  when  one  thing  is  done,  of  trying  to 
persuade  us  it  is  another  ? 

In  truth  I  well  know  that  if  they  undergo,  whether 
they  will  or  not,  the  obligation  of  judging,  for  that 
is  in  the  nature  of  things,  our  impressionists  flatter 
themselves,  on  the  other  hand,  on  escaping  from  the 
necessity  of  classifying.  To  classify  they  say  is  to 
fix  the  rank,  to  distribute  prizes,  to  put  Balzac  above 
2i8 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

Flaubert,  or  a  tragedy  of  Racine  above  a  vaudeville  of 

Labiche ;  and  this  work  is  in  their  eyes  just  the  very 

acme   of  absurdity.     Don't   speak    to    them    only  of 

comparing    men    and  vi^orks  !     Is  every  pleasure  not 

as  good  as  another  ? — I  mean  those  which  are  called 

aesthetic.     What  is  the  use  of  comparing  the  Fleurs 

du   ma  I  with  the    MMitations?     The    Cid  is  a  fine 

thing ;    Andromaque  is    another ;    is  that  any   reason 

why  Ruy  Bias  should  not  be  a  third  ?     If  I  prefer 

Valentine  to  the  Cousine  Bette^  what  ground  and  what 

right  has  anyone  to  try  to  make  me  change  or  reverse 

the  order  of  my  preferences  ?     Is  each  one  of  us  not 

a  little  universe  for  himself  alone  ?     Is  variety  not  a 

necessary  condition  of  pleasure  ?     For  of  what  do  we 

not    weary  ?     What    then    more    barbarous   or    more 

inhuman,   say   they,    than    thus    to    try   to    place   on 

every  head,  in  the  name  of  theoretic  principle  and 

abstract  ideal,  the  heavy  level  of  the  same  definitions, 

the  same  rules,  or  the  same  laws  ?     So  let  the  world 

go  its  own  way,  and  let  each  one  of  us  appear  just  as 

he  is.     If  he  discovers  in  himself  some  curious  failing, 

or  the  germ  of  some  hidden  flaw,  let  him,  instead  of 

destroying  it,  cultivate  it :  and  let  him  make  with  it, 

if  he  can,  a  means  of  literary  existence,  a  reputation, 

and  an  income. 

In  opposition  to  these  theories,  I  cannot  discuss  the 

principles  of  the   classification  of  literary  forms :    it 

would  take  up  too  much  space  and  time.     But  I  shall 

be  content   to   reply  to  our  impressionists  that  they 
219 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

have  perhaps  not  sufficiently  considered  either  the 
nature  of  classification  or  of  comparison.  Would  it 
not  really  be  very  extraordinary  that,  in  an  age  like 
ours,  where  the  comparative  method  has  renewed 
almost  everything,  criticism  alone  should  refuse  its 
assistance,  so  as  not  to  expose  itself  to  the  witticisms 
of  certain  philologers  or  certain  anatomists  who  live 
in  their  seminaries  or  their  laboratories  only  to 
compare  old  texts  or  old  bones  ?  Why,  this  would 
be  a  useful,  interesting,  and  fruitful  work,  to  compare 
the  calcaneum  or  the  navicular  of  the  Lemuridae 
with  that  of  the  Simiadae,  or  the  metre  and  the 
assonances  of  the  Chanson  de  Roland  with  the 
assonances  of  the  Chanson  d''A'iol;  but  it  would  be 
a  waste  of  time  to  compare  the  tragedy  of  Racine 
with  the  drama  of  Shakespeare,  or  the  novel  of  Field- 
ing with  that  of  Balzac.  And  as  to  the  '  relativity  ' 
of  things,  what  comes  of  that  now  ?  A  man  is 
neither  big,  nor  small,  nor  thin,  nor  stout,  nor 
beautiful,  nor  ugly  ;  he  is  only  more  ugly  or  more 
beautiful,  more  stout  or  more  thin,  more  small  or  more 
big  than  another,  than  the  others,  than  the  average  of 
his  race  and  species.  So  also  a  work  of  art  is  what  it 
is,  succeeds  in  being  so,  and  is  so  fully  and  decidedly, 
only  in  so  far  as  it  is  compared  with  another.  Zaire 
would  be  a  beautiful  tragedy  if  there  was  no  Bajazet^ 
and  we  would  doubtless  still  read  the  Doyen  de  Killerine 
or  Cleveland  with  avidity,  if  we  did  not  know  the  novels 
of  George  Sand  and   Balzac.     All  the  progress  that 

220 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

criticism  can  flatter  itself  on  having  accomplished 
during  this  century  is  due  to  this  kind  of  com- 
parison ;  and  it  is  possible  that  this  mania  of  com- 
paring, if  it  is  persisted  in,  may  be  a  sign  of  slowness 
or  narrowness  of  spirit :  but  in  the  meantime  I 
recommend  it  none  the  less  to  all  those  who  believe 
they  should  place  truth  above  themselves  and  the 
interests  of  their  own  particular  talent. 

As  to  the  power  and,  if  I  may  say  so,  the  virtue  of 
classification,  so  many  philosophers,  so  many  scholars 
have  spoken  of  it  so  well,  that  I  hardly  know  whom 
I  should  here  call  to  my  aid,  a  Haeckel  or  an  Agassiz, 
a  Stuart  Mill  or  an  Auguste  Comte.  I  could  add 
also  the  Darwins  and  Huxleys.  The  fine  Essay  on 
Classification  by  Agassiz  is  a  book  which  our  impres- 
sionists cannot  be  too  strongly  advised  to  read.  But 
if  they  prefer  to  have  a  Frenchman  cited,  Auguste 
Comte  has  shown  quite  as  well,  in  his  Positivist 
Philosophyy  that  "in  whatever  kind  of  intellectual 
work,  be  it  scientific,  literary,  artistic,  as  v/cll  as  ia 
natural  history,  "a  methodical  classification  is  not 
only  the  indispensable  summary  of  the  actual  system 
of  our  knowledge,  but  also  the  chief  logical  instru- 
ment of  its  subsequent  perfection."  And  how,  in 
the  hierarchy  of  the  forms,  could  we  place  tragedy, 
for  example,  above  melodrama,  Polyeucte  above  the 
Tour  de  Nesle,  or,  in  the  novel,  Pere  Goriot  above  the 
Exploits  de  Rocambole^  without  giving  our  reasons  ? 
How  could  we  give  these  without  penetrating  further 

221 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

into  the  knowledge  of  the  history,  the  evolution,  and 
the  essence  of  the  form  ?  And  the  further  we  pene- 
trated, how  could  these  very  reasons,  whether  *  sub- 
jective' or  personal,  fail  to  become  more  and  more 
general,  and  properly  '  objective '  ?  After  the  obliga- 
tion of  judging,  the  necessity  of  classifying  thus  seems 
strictly  inherent  in  the  very  notion  of  criticism. 

It  is  not  then  classifying  or  comparing  that  is  old 
and  superannuated,  but,  on  the  contrary,  abstaining 
from  doing  so  ;  and  what  is  arbitrary  is  not  to  '  dis- 
tribute prizes '  but  to  wish  to  be  the  sole  judge,  the 
infaUible  judge,  and  the  judge  beyond  appeal  of  the 
prizes  we  award.  So  act  the  'people  of  society' 
whose  '  taste '^  takes  the  place  of  competence  and 
study,  and  whom  we  see  deciding  on  the  play  or 
the  novel  of  the  day  by  the  prettiness  of  the  things 
they  find  to  say  about  it.  But  Boileau,  Boileau  him- 
self was  even  then  looking  to  something  more.  He 
knew  well  that  if  his  taste  was  good,  it  was  not 
because  it  was  his  own,  but  on  the  contrary  because 
it  was  exterior  and  superior  to  his  own,  and  that  the 
object  of  criticism  is  to  teach  men  to  judge  often 
against  their  own  taste.  Do  not  morality  and  educa- 
tion also  consist,  like  criticism,  in  substituting  in 
ourselves  other  motives  of  judgment  and  action  than 
those  suggested  to  us  by  temperament,  instinct,  and 
nature  ?  There  is  one  other  observation  which  I 
submit  to  our  impressionists.     If  each  of  us  had  the 

pretension    to   concede   or   yield   nothing   to   others, 
222 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

life  would  be  unbearable  ;   and,  similarly,  if  a  work 

of  art  were  merely  the  expression  of  the  individuality 

of  the  artist,  not  only  criticism  but  art  itself  would 

perish. 

Yet  judging  and- classifying  are  only  a  beginning, 

and  we  must  then  explain.     As  to  this  obligation  of 

criticism,  or  this  function,  if  you  will,  which  was  for 

Sainte-Beuve  the  whole  of  criticism,  and  which  must 

remain   one   of  its   essential    parts,   shall    I   say   that 

impressionist  criticism  does  not  submit  to  it  any  more 

than  to  the  others  ?     In  reality,  impressionist  criticism 

does   not    explain,  it   states ;  and    it    describes,  or  it 

comments,  but  it  does  not  interpret.      I  rather  fear 

I  know  at  least  one  of  its  motives.     It  is  that  if  we 

wished    to   distinguish   what   each    book    and    author 

owe    to   all    those    who    have    preceded    them    and 

'caused'  them,  so  to  speak,  we  would  be  startled  at 

the  smallness  of  the  originality  of  mankind.     We  all 

write,  say,  a  poem,  a   play,  a  novel,  or  an   article  : 

and  how  much  do  we  put  into  it  of  ourselves,  which 

is   of  ourselves  and  from   ourselves,  and  only  of  and 

from  ourselves  ?     The  explanation,  then,  is  first  to  be 

found,  or  at  least  to  be  sought  for,  everywhere  but  in 

ourselves  ;  and  too  happy  are  those  whose  originality 

has  not  disappeared    in   this  very  search  !     There  is 

another  proof,  if  that  is  needed,  of  the  existence  of 

objective  criticism.     The  originality  of  a  writer — of 

M.  Zola,  for  example,  or  M.  Henry  Becque — is  not 

defined  by  reference  to  himself,  which  would  imply  a 
223 


BRUNETlfeRE'S  ESSAYS 

contradiction  ;  it  is  not  defined  by  reference  to  me, 
who  am  doubtless  less  original  than  they  are  ;  it  is 
defined  by  reference  to  the  dramatists  or  novelists  who 
have  preceded  them,  who  have  their  place  in  history, 
and  it  is  defined  by  reference  to  the  laws  they  have 
themselves  made  of  their  literary  form,  which  likewise 
has  its  place  in  history. 

The  foundation  of  objective  criticism  is  therefore 
really  the  same  as  that  of  history.  Just  as  there  can 
be  no  possible  doubt  or  allowable  hesitation  about  the 
military  genius  of  Napoleon  or  the  political  genius  of 
Richelieu,  so  too  there  can  be  none  about  the  unique 
originality  of  the  comedy  of  Moliere  or  the  tragedy 
of  Racine ;  and  whoever  will  treat  as  a  *  scamp '  the 
author  of  Andromaque  will  act  like  the  simple  Lanfrey 
when  he  gave  lessons  on  retrospective  tactics  to  the 
victor  of  Austerlitz  :  it  is  himself  he  will  have  judged. 
But  whoever  says  that  one  is  at  liberty  to  prefer 
Regnard's  comedy  to  Moliere's,  the  Distrait  to  the 
Ecole  des  Femmes,  and  the  Folies  amoureuses  to  Tartufe^ 
does  something  much  worse  still,  for  he  might  as  well 
say  that  there  is  no  reason  for  placing  a  living  being 
below  or  above  another  in  the  order  of  species  ;  and, 
along  with  the  foundations  of  objective  criticism,  he 
destroys  with  the  same  blow  those  of  natural  history. 
A  literary  form  is,  indeed,  superior  to  another,  and,  in 
the  same  form,  drama  ode  or  novel,  a  work  is  nearer 
or  farther  away  from  the  perfection  of  its  form,  only 
from  reasons  analogous  to  those  which,  in  the  hierarchy 
224 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

of  organisms,  raise  vertebrata  above  moUusca,  for  ex- 
ample, and,  among  the  vertebrata,  the  dog  and  cat 
above  the  ornithorhynchus.  Such  is  the  true  way  of 
understanding  the  '  relativity  of  knowledge ' ;  such  is 
the  real  way  ;  such  is  the  only  way  that  is  not  sophistry 
or  pure  word-splitting.  Had  we  the  'facet-eye  of  a 
fly '  or  the  '  rude  and  simple  brain  of  an  orang-outang,* 
things  might  change  for  us  in  appearance  and  mean- 
ing ;  but  the  relations  which  would  still  continue 
to  unite  them,  and  the  system  formed  by  these 
relations,  in  whatever  way,  yet  always  connected, 
would  not  suffer  change.  And  hence,  since  laws  are 
nothing  else  than  the  expression  of  these  relations,  the 
result  follows  that  to  deny  the  possibility  of  objective 
criticism  is  to  deny  the  possibility  of  any  science  what- 
ever. If  there  is  no  objective  criticism,  no  more  is 
there  objective  natural  history,  chemistry,  or  physics. 
This  does  not  mean  that  criticism  is  a  science,  but  that 
they  are  connected  ;  and,  as  it  has,  like  science,  a 
precise  object,  it  can  borrow  from  science  methods, 
processes,  and  directions. 

How  then  can  they  have  failed  to  recognise  this  ? 
There  are  many  reasons,  of  which  I  would  choose,  for 
the  present  occasion,  only  the  least  unkind,  or  even 
the  most  flattering  to  our  impressionist  critics.  It 
is  no  use  for  them  to  write  critiques ;  they  all 
nourish,  in  their  inmost  heart,  the  secret  ambition  of 
novelist,  dramatist,  or  poet.  So  too  did  Sainte- 
Beuve,  who  well  knew,  since  he  himself  confessed  it 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

in  so  many  words,  that  "the  true  condition  of  the 

critical  spirit  is  to  have  no  art  of  its  own  "  ;  but  who 

could  not  refrain,  as  often  as  he  had  to  speak  of  Balzac 

or  Hugo,  from  considering  them  from   the   point   of 

view  of  Joseph   Delorme  or   VoluptL     It  is  the  same 

with  M.  France,  M.  Lemaitre,  and  M.  Paul  Desjardins. 

Even  if  M.  Desjardins,  the  youngest  of  the  three,  were 

not  the  author  of  some  novels,  his  critical  articles,  the 

form  he  habitually  gives  them,  the  pleasure  he  takes 

in  mingling  traits  which  describe  or  deal  with  himself 

but   are   equally   foreign    to    his   subject,   would   still 

proclaim  the  novelist  which  lies  dormant  in  him.     As 

for   M.   Lemaitre,  after   having  made   practically  his 

first    appearance    with    his    Petites    Orientales^    if    I 

remember   rightly,    and   after    having    written    some 

ConteSy  of  which  there  are  at  least  two  or  three  that 

are  charming,  he  is  now  attracted  by  the  drama,  as 

all  those  know  who  lately  applauded  his  Rhjolth^  and, 

more   recently,  his  Diputi   Leveau.      Lastly,  to  say 

nothing    of    the    Noces    cortnthiennes    or    the    Poemes 

dorhy  it  is  not  in  his  criticism,  it  is  in  the  Crime  de 

Syhestre   Bonnard^   or  still   more    in    Thai's^   that   M. 

France   has   put    his    best.       Evidently,    if    criticism 

interests  all  of  them,  it    has  never  been,  and   never 

will    be,    their    principal    business ;    or    rather    they 

use  it  only  to  experiment  with  ideas,  until  they  can 

give  them  a  different  and  still   more    personal    form, 

which  will   some  day   be  the  soul  of  their    dramas, 

poems,  or  novels. 

226 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

There  is  nothing  more  natural.  Poet  or  novelist, 
what  makes  the  originality  of  the  artist  is  his  impres- 
sionist, subjective,  or  truly  personal  way  of  seeing 
and  feeling.  Add  something  to  the  knowledge  we 
have  of  common  life  ;  discover  in  it  some  unexplored 
province,  if  such  still  exists  ;  complete,  correct,  or 
modify  the  idea  which  we  have  of  it,  such  is  the  work 
of  the  poet,  in  the  most  general  sense  of  the  term. 
And  here  is  the  work  of  the  artist :  he  enlarges, 
develops,  perfects  the  means  of  his  art ;  he  finds 
means  to  render  what  his  art  had  not  yet  expressed ; 
and  he  adds  to  it  the  individuality  of  his  own  sen- 
sations. The  only  precaution  which,  I  believe,  must 
then  be  taken,  is,  in  perfecting  the  means  of  the  art, 
not  to  reduce  it  entirely  to  the  perfection  of  the 
form,  as  our  Parnassians  have  done,  nor  to  begin 
by  mutilating  and  calumniating  life  in  some  way 
or  other  before  imitating  it,  as  our  naturalists  have 
done.  But  if  the  object  of  criticism  is  entirely  dif- 
ferent, do  not  the  merits  of  the  poet  and  the  novelist 
become  for  it  as  many  faults  ?  This  fashion  of  inter- 
vening in  person  may  greatly  assist  the  novelty  of 
impressions,  but  does  it  not  affect  justice  and  truth? 
This  is  what  all  those  believe  who — like  Villemain 
and  Guizot  formerly,  like  Littre,  like  Scherer  nearer 
our  time,  and  lastly  like  M.  Taine,  who  were  much 
more  convinced  of  the  relativity  of  things  than  our 
impressionists  themselves,  and  who  understood  it  as  it 

should  be  understood — have  believed  no  less  thoroughly 
227 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

in    the    existence   of    objective    criticism  ;    and    we 
believe  in  it  along  with  them. 

I  do  not  know,  indeed,  if  the  disadvantages,  or 
even  the  dangers  of  this  impressionism  are  evi- 
dent, and  that,  in  the  first  place,  it  would  break 
the  bonds  which  closely  unite  criticism  and  history. 
M.  Anatole  France,  M.  Jules  Lemaitre,  M.  Paul 
Desjardins  are  not  merely  talented  writers.  They  are 
also  scholars,  mandarins,  as  M.  Lemaitre  says,  whose 
impressions,  whatever  they  be,  are  determined  and 
caused,  more  often  than  they  believe,  by  the  literary 
education  they  have  received.  They  readily  re- 
proach objective  criticism  that  its  *  dogmatism '  is  only 
the  form  which  it  gives  to  its  'personal  preferences.' 
Yet,  among  their  *  personal  preferences,'  or  what  they 
take  for  such,  there  is  quite  a  part  of  *  dogmatism ' 
which  is  neither  theirs  nor  of  them.  It  is  what  they 
'  know ' ;  and  their  knowledge  preserves  them  from 
the  trap  which  impressionism  keeps  always  laid  for 
ignorance.  They  may  therefore  prefer  Madame 
Bovary  to  Racine's  Athalie.  In  reality,  their  paradox 
amuses  them  ;  they  admit  it  in  spite  of  themselves  ; 
and  the  proof  is  that  they  cannot  keep  from  letting 
something  of  the  truth  slip  in  developing  their  para- 
dox, and  this  truth  ruins  it.  But  smaller  scholars 
will  come  in  their  turn  ;  they  have  come  already, 
who  will  know  nothing,  who  will  abstain  from  read- 
ing anything,  from  fear  that  their  impressions  will  be 

taken    from    them    beforehand,   and    who    will    con- 
228 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

stitute  themselves,  none  the  less,  by  right  of  their 
impressionism,  partial  judges  of  matters  of  intellect. 
I  know  more  than  twenty  whom  I  could  name. 
Literary  history  would  perish  first ;  tradition  next, 
with  literary  history  ;  and  finally,  with  tradition,  the 
sentiment  of  solidarity  which  binds  the  generations 
together. 

One  consequence  would  follow  from  this,  that 
criticism,  now  thus  cut  ofF  from  its  connection  with 
history,  would  lose,  at  the  same  time  as  the  notion 
of  its  object,  the  knowledge  of  its  role  or  function. 
For  to  say  that  it  has  no  function  or  role  is  another 
error,  as  we  saw  that  it  was  wrong,  in  order  to  deny 
its  purpose,  to  exaggerate  gratuitously  the  number, 
the  nature,  and  the  bearing  of  its  contradictions.  Its 
province  is  to  give  directions  to  art ;  and  this  may  be 
noted  several  times  in  history.  With  a  little  exaggera- 
tion, but  not  without  some  truth,  has  it  not  been 
claimed  that  modern  German  literature  is  the  work 
or  the  creation  of  Lessing's  criticism  ?  And  with  us, 
three  times  at  least  within  three  hundred  years,  has 
not  criticism  directed  the  evolution  of  our  poetry  ? 
Du  Bellay,  Ronsard  himself,  and  Baif  above  all  began 
by  being  critics  as  much  as  poets ;  Boileau  was  only 
that ;  and  who  now  does  not  know  that  romanticism 
was  already  clearly  present  in  the  GSnie  du  Chris- 
tianisme?  If  nobody  can  flatter  himself  on  ever  being 
either   Chateaubriand,   Boileau,    or    Ronsard,   nobody 

is  forbidden,   I  think,   from  trying  to  follow^  them  : 
229 


BRUNETliRE'S  ESSAYS 

and,  in  any  case,  their  example  is  enough  to  show 
what  services,  and  what  kind  of  services,  criticism  can 
render.  Infatuated  as  they  are  to-day  with  them- 
selves and  their  sens  propre^  as  used  to  be  said,  if 
criticism  cannot  immediately  act  on  authors,  it  can 
act,  and  acts  to  some  purpose  every  day,  on  opinion, 
of  which  they  are  only  the  expression,  when  they  are 
not  its  humble  servants.  It  can  take  away  from 
them  their  public,  and,  by  modifying  the  milieu^ 
it  can  make  even  the  most  stubborn  change  his 
manner. 

Are  examples  necessary  ?  Has  not  one  of  our 
impressionists,  M.  Paul  Desjardins,  somewhere  defined 
naturalism  as  "the  application  of  the  processes  of 
criticism  to  the  literature  of  the  imagination  "  ;  and 
though  it  is  a  little  narrow,  the  definition  is  none  the  less 
ingenious  and  happy.  But  what  I  hold  as  absolutely 
true  in  it,  is  that,  without  criticism,  naturalism  would 
never  have  had  the  success  it  has  had.  It  would  be 
easily  proved  that  the  author  of  La  Bete  humaine 
and  U Assommo'ir  owes  almost  everything,  not  to 
Balzac,  nor  even  to  Flaubert,  but  to  M.  Taine,  to 
M.  Taine's  essay  on  Balzac^  and  to  the  History  of 
English  Literature.  So  too  how  many  times,  in  his 
earliest  work,  when  he  was  as  yet  the  author  only  of 
the  Fortune  des  Rougon  or  the  Conquete  de  PlassanSy 
did  he  not  complain  that  M.  Taine  had  abandoned 
him  !     ^uare  me  dereliquistt  !     If  M.  Taine  had  laid 

down,  in  his  History  of  English  Literature,  the  principles 
230 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

of  naturalism,  he  had    been   careful   to  mark,  in  his 

Philosophy  of  Art,  the  limits  which  naturalism  could 

not    pass  without  departing  from    the   conditions  of 

art    itself.     So  criticism  has  not  only  determined,  as 

we  said,  the   direction    of  contemporary    naturalism, 

but  has  also  protected  it  from  its  own  excesses ;  and 

so  what  is  best  in  naturalism — and  nobody,  I  know, 

denies  that  there  is  much  good  in  it — must  be  laid  to 

the  credit  of  criticism. 

The  same  thing  is  to  be  said  of  the  drama.     For 

the   last   twenty-five    or   thirty   years   no   work   has 

appeared  on  the  stage  which  marks  an  epoch  in  the 

history  of  the  art,  which  is  capable  of  forming  a  school 

and  inspiring  successful  imitators.     Yet  the  aesthetics 

of  the  drama  have  completely  changed.     If  there  are 

some  of  us  still  who   used   to  praise   the  ingenious- 

ness,  the  abundance  of  resource,  the  very  real  ability 

of  Eugene  Scribe,  how  many  are  we  ?     And  what  is 

there,  in  the  eyes  of  young  people,  more  out  of  fashion, 

more   artificial,  and  more  false,  than  Une  Chainsy  for 

example,   if  not   Bertrand  et  Raton  f     There   is  no 

more  desire  for  these  preparations,  these  conventions, 

this  confusion  or    medley  of  styles.     Criticism  alone 

has  accomplished    this   work.     It    is  criticism   which 

asked  itself  why  the  drama  had   remained  for  thirty 

or  forty  years  in  arrear  of  the  novel.     It  is  criticism 

which   showed   the  good   points    in    the    conventions 

which   the  school    of   Scribe   had   constituted    as   so 

many    articles   of  faith.     Better   still :    among    these 
231 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

conventions,  it  is  criticism  which  labours  to  separate 
the  necessary  from  the  arbitrary.  And,  should  M. 
Becque,  or  someone  else,  give  us  one  day  or  other 
this  comedy,  doubtless  not  entirely  new,  but  yet 
freer  and  franker,  of  which  we  must  admit  that  La 
Parisienne  or  Les  Corbeaux  are  little  more  than  the 
promise,  it  is  still  criticism  to  which  the  twentieth 
century  will  be  indebted. 

There,  in  the  present  as  in  all  time,  is  the 
true  function  of  criticism,  which  it  can  evidently 
fulfil  only  by  escaping  from  impressionism.  If 
criticism  means  to  act,  it  must  be  something  else, 
and  something  more  interesting,  than  the  manifesta- 
tion of  our  tastes  and  preferences,  for  these,  to  tell 
the  truth,  usually  interest  only  ourselves.  Do  not  M. 
Lemaitre  and  M.  France  know  that  the  remnant  of 
authority  which  it  still  preserves  in  the  provinces  is  due 
to  the  presence  in  their  judgments  of  reasons  which 
are  not  theirs  but  everybody's  ?  In  the  same  way, 
when  reading  the  Memoirs  or  Confessions  of  others, 
we  think  we  like  what  wc  find  similar  or  applicable 
to  ourselves,  while  in  reality  what  we  seek  is  a  wider, 
more  varied,  and  deeper  knowledge  of  man  in  general. 
So  let  us  admit  it  with  a  good  grace  :  let  us  put  some- 
thing above  our  tastes  ;  and  since  there  must  be  criti- 
cism, let  us  say  that  there  cannot  be  any  that  is  not 
objective.  This  is  all  that  I  have  endeavoured  to  show 
in  these  pages  :  and  I  think  that    to  have   shown  it 

successfully  would  not    be   a  matter  of  indifference, 

232 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

either  to  the  idea  which  we  must  hold  of  criticism, 
or  to  the  education  of  the  mind,  or  perhaps  to  the  very 
future  of  literature — or  to  the  literature  of  the  future. 
Now,  as  for  some  dilettanti  who  ask  what  is  the 
good  of  criticism  and  why  we  do  not  do  without  it, 
we  may  be  content  to  reply  by  asking  another  ques- 
tion :  what  is  the  good  also  of  art,  of  history,  of 
science  ?  And,  indeed,  the  world  would  not  be 
changed  if  the  Comedie-Fran^aise  were  to  give  us 
this  year  at  least  a  masterpiece  ;  and  since  we  live 
very  comfortably  in  an  entire  ignorance  of  the  nature 
of  Merovingian  institutions,  we  may  with  stronger 
reason  do  without  knowing  what  must  be  thought 
of  the  works  of  those  who  have  studied  them.  But  I 
shall  add  that  if  criticism  is  inferior  to  history  and 
art  in  so  many  other  respects,  it  has  this  advantage 
or  this  superiority  over  art  and  history  that  it  alone 
can  prevent  the  world,  according  to  M.  Renan's  ex- 
pression, from  "  being  devoured  by  charlatanism."  Too 
occupied,  too  diligent,  too  much  a  slave  to  the  labour 
of  daily  life,  unable  to  analyse  its  pleasure  and  recognise 
the  quality  of  it,  the  crowd  always  runs  at  the  call 
of  those  who  flatter  ;  and  the  charlatans  of  art  or 
literature  know  this  well.  It  is  precisely  the  business 
of  criticism  to  think  and  to  judge  for  the  crowd.  In 
fixing  the  rank  and  distributing  its  prizes,  it  is  pos- 
sible it  may  give  certain  little  philosophers  something 
to  laugh  at,  but  it  does  work  doubly  useful :  it  teaches 
the  crowd  that  there  is  some  difference  between 
233 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

Ponson  du  Terrail  and  Balzac,  which  it  is  doubtless 
well  to  know  ;  and  it  avenges  talent  for  the  successes 
of  mediocrity,  which  are  humiliating  some  way  or 
other  to  everybody.  Why,  alas,  must  we  end  by 
saying  that,  if  the  task  has  never  been  more  urgent, 
these  latter  words  make  no  pretence  to  perform  it ; 
and  that  as  our  fathers  might  have  used  them,  those 
who  come  after  us  will  use  them  in  their  turn  ; 
and  they  will  be  always  true. 


234 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  RHETORIC 

If,  as  has  been  said,  there  are  dead  men  who  must  be 
killed,  are  there  not  others  from  time  to  time  who 
must  be  brought  to  life  again,  or  have  at  least  their 
memory  revived  ?  This  is  what  I  was  thinking  a 
short  time  ago  while  reading  the  invective  of  a  worthy 
philosopher  against  rhetoric,  and  I  asked  myself  if  the 
time  had  not  come  to  plead  a  little  the  cause  of  this 
illustrious  victim.  For  though  there  is  certainly  one 
part  of  the  art  of  writing  which  is  divine  and,  as  it 
were,  inspired,  and  which,  at  once  inimitable  and 
incommunicable,  is  neither  to  be  learned  nor  trans- 
mitted, are  there  not  also  humbler  parts  which  can 
be  taught  and  really  have  rules  and  theories  ?  Surely 
nobody  would  dare  to  say  that  there  is  no  art  of  sing- 
ing. The  most  beautiful  voice  in  the  world  is  little 
in  itself,  if  it  cannot  be  used  and  controlled.  Why 
should  there  not  be  also  an  art  of  speaking  or  writing  ? 
Because  rhetoric  has  been  abused,  must  we  condemn 
its  use  or  despise  its  utility — its  value  I  shall  soon  be 
saying.  And  because  someone  has  said  that  "true 
rhetoric  laughs  at  rhetoric"  must  we  take  him  at 
his  word  ?     Or  shall  we  hold  with  another  that  a  man 

235 


BRUNETliRE'S  ESSAYS 

always  writes  well  enough  when  he  succeeds  in  making 
himself  understood  ?  In  this  case  I  do  not  know  the 
kitchen-maid  or  stable-boy  who  does  not  succeed  as 
well  as  an  academician. 

Yes,  undoubtedly,  if  we  never  spoke  but  to  act, 
if  when  we  wrote  we  were  guided  only  by  interests 
superior  to  ourselves,  interests  which  self-love  has  never 
tainted,  if  we  thought  only  of  instructing,  or  of  gain- 
ing or  converting  souls,  if  we  were  Pascal — since  I  have 
just  quoted  from  him — or  Bossuet,  or  Bourdaloue  only, 
then  we  could  affect  to  despise  rhetoric  !  We  could 
throw  far  off  its  ornaments  and  artifices.  We 
should  have  the  right  to  despise,  for  our  speech  as 
for  our  person,  *  all  that  men  admire.'  And  yet,  as 
to  Pascal  himself,  why  did  he  re-write,  even  as  often 
as  seven  or  eight  times,  each  one  of  his  Provlnciales  f  * 
And  Bossuet,  though  more  disinterested  than  Pascal, 
why  did  he  re-write  his  Sermons  F  Why  did  he  revise 
so  carefully  the  text  of  his  Oraisons  funebres  or  his 
Hhtotre  universelle  ?  To  make  sure  of  its  doctrine, 
I  know,  and  grant ;  but  also   that  the  force  of  the 

*  As  it  is  chiefly  Pascal  and  his  saying  that  are  cited  against  rhe- 
toric, it  may  be  well  to  reproduce  a  few  lines  from  Nicole,  in  his 
Histoire  des  Provlnciales:  'This  letter  (the  first)  had  all  the  success 
desired.  ...  It  produced  in  the  minds  of  all  the  effect  which  was  ex- 
pected. //  skcnved  hoiv  much  the  style  of  luriting  luhich  Montalte  had  chosen 
ivas  fitted  to  engage  the  attention  of  the  ivorld  in  this  dispute.  It  was  plain 
that  it  forced  in  some  way  or  other  the  dullest  and  the  most  indifferent  to 
take  an  interest  in  it  ;  that  it  stirred  them  up,  that  it  ivon  them  over  by  en- 
joyment f  and  that,  without  aiming  at  giving  them  vain  amusement,  it 
led  them  pleasantly  to  the  knowledge  of  the  truth.' 
236 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

words  should  make  the  ideas  more  sure  of  impressing 
the  reader  or  listener.  They  did  not  need  to  despise 
rhetoric,  for  they  indulged  in  it.  And  though  they 
did  not  let  it  take  up  more  place  in  their  work  than 
it  should  occupy,  they  indulged  in  it  all  the  same. 
They  knew  *  the  power  of  a  word  put  in  its  proper 
place  : '  they  knew  also  that  of  '  harmonious  cadence.' 
As  they  dealt  with  men,  they  captivated  them  by 
human  methods.  Was  that  not  better  than  estrang- 
ing them  at  the  outset,  for  as  they  had  something 
they  wished  to  tell,  should  they  have  begun  by  dis- 
couraging or  disgusting  them  from  listening  ?  But 
how  much  more  is  that  which  is  true  of  those  men 
true  of  us,  I  mean  of  all  those  writers  who  are  neither 
apostles  nor  leaders  of  souls,  who  write  for  their  own 
pleasure  perhaps,  but  also  that  they  may  be  read, 
just  as  the  painter  aims  at  being  looked  at  and  the 
musician  at  being  heard.  Only  those  can  I  forgive 
for  their  contempt  or  disdain  of  rhetoric  who  do  not 
print,  and  never  have  printed,  and  will  not  leave 
Memoirs  behind  them,  who  will  in  fact  always  keep 
from  writing,  even  against  rhetoric,  since  we  have  to 
use  it  as  soon  as  we  write. 

It  is  true  we  must  come  to  an  understanding  on  the 
meaning  of  the  very  word  rhetoric^  and  this  is  no  easy 
matter,  since  it  has  been  distorted  from  the  old  sense 
it  still  had  at  the  time  of  Pascal  and  Bossuet  to  be 
made  a  kind  of  literary  insult.  Further,  we  Hve  at  a 
time  when  everyone  takes  the  liberty  of  giving  words 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

whatever  sense  is  convenient — without  any  thought 
on  their  signification,  their  history,  or  their  origin. 
What  is  it,  for  example,  that  M.  Ernest  Renan  meant 
to  say  in  the  preface  to  the  third  volume  of  his  History 
of  the  People  of  Israel^  when  he  rather  bitterly  re- 
proached those  who  did  not  see  the  resemblance  be- 
tween Felix  Pyat  and  the  prophet  Jeremiah  which  he 
finds  so  amusing  with  '  their  rhetoricians'  suscepti- 
bility '  ?  I  suppose  he  only  meant  to  be  unpleasant, 
for  what  rhetoric  can  find  a  resemblance  doubtful, 
a  comparison  bad,  an  allusion  unfortunate,  and  say 
so  very  simply.  Surely  a  man  can  have  other 
ideas  on  the  Prophets  than  those  of  M.  Renan, 
and  not  be  a  '  rhetorician  '  for  that  ?  But  when  M. 
Maxime  Du  Camp  in  his  turn  tells  us  in  his  Theophile 
Gautier  that,  along  with  the  verses  of  Musset,  those 
of  Gautier  are  the  only  ones  which  are  not  *  tainted 
with  rhetoric,'  what  meaning  does  he  attach  to  it  ? 
And  what  should  we  ?  For  I  would  have  thought 
that  there  was  no  rhetoric  at  all,  or  very  little,  in 
focelyn  and  the  DestineeSy  for  example,  in  the  verses 
of  Lamartine  and  Vigny  :  but  on  the  other  hand  I 
find  much,  and  a  good  deal  more  than  I  would  have 
wished  for,  in  Jlbertus  and  Rolla. 

Regrettez-vous  le  temps  ou  le  ciel  sur  la  tcrre, 
Marchait  et  rcspirait  dans  un  peuplc  de  dieux.  .  .  . 

Dors-tu  content,  Voltaire,  et  ton  hideux  sourire 
Voltige-t-il  encor  sur  tes  os  d^charnds.  .  .  . 

Cloitres  silencieux,  voiites  des  monasteres, 
C'est  vous,  sombres  caveaux,  vous  qui  savez  aimer.  .  .  . 
238 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

Who  has  ever  made  a  greater  abuse  than  Musset  of 
the  exclamation,  and  the  apostrophe,  and  generally  all 
the  figures  that  are  catalogued  in  the  treatises  of  the 
rhetoricians  ?  But  as  for  Gautier,  is  it  not  amusing 
that  anyone  should  wish  to  exempt  at  this  day  from 
the  reproach  of  rhetoric  him  of  all  our  contemporaries 
who  believed  most  firmly  in  the  power  of  words,  in 
their  peculiar  and  intrinsic  value,  exterior  and  superior 
to  the  ideas  they  express  ?  For  fear  of  losing  ourselves 
among  all  these  contradictions,  let  us  hold  by  the 
old  definitions,  and  take  the  word  as  it  has  always  been 
taken  from  Aristotle  to  Fenelon.  Rhetoric  is  the  body 
of  rules  and  laws  which  govern  the  art  of  writing,  con- 
sidered in  itself  as  inseparable  from  the  art  of  think- 
ing :  and  whether  it  is  known  or  not,  and  I  rather 
fear  it  is  not  known  very  well,  what  one  denies  in 
attacking  rhetoric  is  an  art  of  thinking  and  writing. 

In  what  does  it  consist  ?  I  shall  take  good  care  to 
be  vague.  I  am  sure  to  be  asked  if  I  am  master  of  it 
myself.  The  joke,  it  is  true,  would  mean  nothing  :  but 
I  prefer  not  to  give  too  good  occasion  for  it.  Its  rules 
and  laws  are  to  be  found  in  all  treatises  on  rhetoric, 
and  Aristotle  and  Quintilian  say  some  very  good  things 
about  it,  which  are  as  true  for  us  as  for  the  Greeks  and 
Romans.  But  it  will  be  most  interesting  perhaps  to 
recall  the  principles  of  this  art,  or  rather  its  reasons, 
the  eternal  and  solid  reasons  which  will  always  justify 
it.  Not  only  is  it  not  such  a  futile  and  puerile  thing, 
as  it  is  often  said  to  be,  to  learn  to  write,  but  it  is 
239 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

possible  that  it  may  be  essential.     Brought  to  birth  at 

an  early  date,  and  almost  contemp-rary  in  its  origin 

with    Greek    literature,   rhetoric   should    undoubtedly 

answer,  and  I  believe  it  does,  to  some  general  interior 

and  profound  need  of  literature  and  humanity. 

"  We  show  too  little  esteem  of  the  public  if  we  do  not 

take  the  trouble  of  preparation  when  dealing  with  it. 

And  a  man  who  would  appear  in  a  night-cap  and  a 

dressing-gown  on  a  day  of  ceremony  would  not  commit 

a  greater  incivility  than  he  who  exposes  to  the  light  of 

the  world  things  which  are  good  only  in  private  or  in 

conversations  only  with  intimate  friends  or  valets."    So 

says  Balzac  somewhere,  the  other  Balzac,  the  one  whom 

Sainte-Beuve  preferred    for  quite  personal    reasons — 

and  who,  as  he  has  so  well  said,  had  actually  made 

French   prose   learn  its  rhetoric.     How  many  people 

would  not  write,  if  they  were  made,  if  they  could  be 

made,  before  writing,  to  think  over  this  lesson  of  old 

politeness  !      How  many  Memoirs  and  yournals  and 

Confessions  would  literature  have  the  luck  to  be  rid  of, 

if  we  could  distinguish  for  ourselves  what  is  suitable 

only  for  our  '  intimate  friends '  and  our  *  valets' — if  we 

have  them — and  what  is  worth  being  exposed  *  to  the 

light  of  the  world '  !     This  is  the  first  principle  of  all 

rhetoric.     A  man  writes  and  speaks  for  himself,  but 

also  for  others,  and  assuredly  we  should  neither  sacrifice 

nor  disguise  for  them  what  we  believe  to  be  justice 

and  truth,  but  should  present  these  in  a  manner  which 

does  not  jar  too  rudely  on  their  ears,  their  habits,  or 
240 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

their  prejudices.  Is  it  not  thus — I  think  it  is  worth 
the  passing  remark — that  our  classical  literature  has 
grown  and  developed  ?  I  refer  no  longer  to  Balzac. 
But  we  may  be  sure  that  the  author  of  the  Provindales, 
had  he  not  taken  pains  to  win  society  at  once  to 
his  side,  would  never  have  succeeded  in  insinuating 
into  the  minds  of  his  time  something  of  the  severity 
of  Jansenist  morality.  And  in  truth,  the  means  he 
chose  was  excellent  rhetoric,  but  it  was  rhetoric  all  the 
same. 

Let  us  remember,  in  fact,  that  literature,  like  art 
in  general,  has  really  a  function — I  am  tempted  to 
say  a  social  mission.  This  is  the  profound  meaning 
of  the  ancient  myths,  which  gave  eloquence  a  place 
at  the  beginning  of  civilisations  or  even  of  societies. 
Do  we  not  know,  moreover,  that  if  great  peoples 
anywhere  awake  to  a  full  consciousness  of  what  they 
are,  it  is  in  their  literature  ?  And,  divided  as  we  are 
by  all  sorts  of  means,  by  our  interests  or  our  passions, 
is  it  not  literature  still  that  ever  re-establishes  a 
solidarity,  which  on  the  other  hand  the  attraction  of 
selfish  pleasure  and  the  hardness  of  the  struggle 
for  life  perpetually  tend  to  dissolve  ?  An  ode  or 
an  elegy,  a  drama  or  a  novel,  work  only  on  the 
reader,  if  I  may  say  so,  according  as  they  awaken 
or  produce  in  him  '  states  of  mind '  which  are  like 
those  of  the  novelist  or  the  dramatist  or  the  poet. 
The  knowledge  of  these  states  of  mind,  of  their  most 
general  and  human  qualities,  and  consequently  the  art 

Q 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

or  science  of  the  means  to  induce  them,  is  what  the 
ancient  rhetoricians  called  the  *  topic'  We  may 
change  the  word  if  it  is  too  Greek,  too  pedantic,  too 
uncouth  for  us  nowadays  :  but  the  thing  remains  the 
same.  A  little  of  the  '  topic '  would  have  prevented 
Corneille  from  writing  his  Thiodore^  his  Pertharitey 
or  his  Jttila.  It  would  prevent  our  contemporary 
novelists  from  taking  particular  and  exceptional  and 
morbid  states  of  the  human  mind  as  ordinary  and 
general  states.  At  least,  in  describing  them  they 
would  know  how  to  connect  them  with  these  less 
exceptional  states  of  which  they  are  only  an  aberra- 
tion. Further,  each  of  us  would  undoubtedly  give 
less  play  to  his  private  feelings ;  and  what  would 
be  the  effect  on  literature  I  do  not  know,  though  in 
mixing  itself  up  with  the  life  of  the  world  it  would 
assuredly  come  nearer  its  true  aim.  It  would  be 
thought  no  longer  that  originality  consists  in  being 
like  nobody  else,  but  only  in  describing  a  personal 
experience  of  the  world  and  life.  And  this  would 
still  be  rhetoric,  and  I  venture  to  say  that  it  wOuld 
be  good  and  excellent  rhetoric. 

Here,  perhaps,  is  a  more  important  consideration. 
Examine  it  closely  enough  and  it  will  be  seen  that 
what  is  really  attacked  under  the  name  of  rhetoric 
is  all  the  means  for  urging  on  men  things  which  are 
not  to  be  proved.  Liberty,  and  immortality,  and  even 
morality  cannot  be    proved  :    they  are  to    be   urged. 

We  cannot  establish  the  necessity  of  obedience,  or  of 
242 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

self-control,  or  of  self-sacrifice  ;  but  we  can  incline  our 
hearts  to  them.  This  is  what  those  people  cannot 
tolerate  who,  as  they  say,  believe  only  in  what  can  be 
proved.  So  they  include  indifferently  under  the  name 
of  rhetoric — with  a  disdain  mingled  with  a  certain 
amount  of  anger — all  they  fear  may  embarrass  or 
contradict  their  own  convictions.  Rhetoric  they  see 
in  a  Provinciale  of  Pascal  !  Rhetoric,  in  a  sermon  of 
Bossuet,  on  the  Honneur  du  monde  or  the  Maine  des 
hommes  contre  la  verite !  Rhetoric,  in  a  Discours  of 
Rousseau,  in  his  Contrat  social  or  his  Profession  de 
foidu  Vicaire  Savoyard!  Rhetoric,  in  the  Genie  du 
Christianisme  or  in  the  Essai  sur  I  ^Indifference  !  And 
rhetoric,  generally,  in  all  they  feel  to  oppose,  not  the 
truth — since  it  escapes  us,  alas,  in  all  these  matters — 
but  the  ideas  or  principles  with  which,  in  default  of  the 
truth,  and  by  their  own  necessities,  they  have  decided  to 
comply.  As  for  me,  I  know  no  finer  praise  of  rhetoric  : 
and  the  more  I  think  of  it,  the  more  it  seems  to  me 
that  there  precisely  is  its  forte,  as  well  as  the  hidden 
reason  of  the  severe  attacks  to  which  it  is  exposed. 

Yes,  where  the  power  of  logic  and  dialectic  ends, 
there  begins  the  power  of  rhetoric.  Where  reasoning 
wanders,  and  reason  even  blenches,  there  does  it 
come  and  found  its  empire.  It  lays  hold  of  an 
entire  province  of  the  human  mind,  not  the  least  vast 
and  inaccessible,  and  impenetrable  to  the  demonstra- 
tions of  erudition  and  the  inductions  of  metaphysics  ; 
it  establishes  itself  there,  and  reigns  in  sovereign 
243 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

sway.  "  Tell  me,"  asked  Cicero,  at  the  beginning  of 
one  of  his  treatises  on  rhetoric,  which  contain  passages 
which  are  worth  all  his  speeches,  "  tell  me  how  would 
men  ever  have  been  able  to  bend  their  minds  to  the 
observation  of  uprightness  and  justice  :  how  would 
they  have  consented  to  yield  their  wishes  to  those  of 
their  fellows  :  how  would  they  have  been  persuaded 
to  make  a  common  cause  of  the  common  interest, 
and  in  this  interest  to  sacrifice  at  need  even  their  life, 
if  it  had  not  been  by  the  aid  and  means  of  persuasion 
and  eloquence  and  rhetoric  ? "  And  indeed,  upright- 
ness, charity,  justice,  virtue,  love  of  country,  all  the 
sentiments  that  give  the  society  of  men  its  value,  and 
bring  it  about  that  not  even  instinct,  which  is  always 
selfish,  but  even  reason,  which  is  always  calculating, 
can  dissuade  us — it  is  this,  it  is  eloquence  and  rhetoric 
which  make  them  touch  the  heart,  which  lend  them  a 
voice  and  gesture,  which  make  them  speak,  if  I  may 
say  so,  to  their  very  bodies.  Such  is  the  origin  of 
their  '  figures,'  the  aim  of  their  '  movements,'  the  ex- 
planation of  their  power.  In  materialising  what  can 
be  neither  seen  nor  touched,  rhetoric  makes  them  real 
motives,  or  rather  springs  of  action.  The  rhetoricians 
of  the  sixteenth  century  brought  about  the  Refor- 
mation, and  the  rhetoricians  of  the  eighteenth  the 
Revolution,  and  these  perhaps  are  great  enough  things 
— whatever  else  may  be  thought  of  them.  For  they 
acted,  in  their  character  of  rhetoricians,  at  those  times 

when  mighty  resolves  were  afoot,  and  their  power  was 
244 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

as  if  inherent  in  what  is  deepest  in  human  nature.  We 
do  not  live  by  bread,  and  algebra,  and  exegesis  alone, 
but  by  every  word  that  comes  from  the  heart  of  our 
fellows  and  penetrates  to  ours.  If  rhetoric  is  the  art 
of  giving  this  word  its  value — and  this  is  a  definition 
which  I  think  will  hold — neither  logic  nor  dialectics 
would  ever  prevail  against  it :  and,  instead  of  complain- 
ing that  this  is  so,  it  seems  to  me  that  we  should  rather 
consider  it  a  matter  for  congratulation. 

For  it  matters  not  that  it  can  be  put  to  a  bad  use. 
What  cannot  be  misused  ?  Corruptio  optimi  pessima 
est.  If  rhetoric  had  less  that  made  for  good,  it 
would  have  less  that  made  for  evil :  and  then  is 
science,  which  is  opposed  to  it,  so  sure  of  having 
produced  nothjng  but  good  ?  It  would  be  an  easy 
matter  to  show  its  error  if  it  believed  so ;  and 
humanity  has  paid  dearly  for  more  than  one  service 
that  we  owe  to  the  learned.  But,  what  is  more 
certain  still,  a  demonstration  has  never  triumphed 
over  a  sentiment ;  and  therefore  if  there  is  a  bad 
rhetoric,  all  that  we  can  do  against  it,  is  to  oppose  to 
it  a  better.  A  speech,  if  I  may  say  so,  can  be 
answered  only  by  a  speech,  and  a  sermon  by  a 
sermon  —  Demosthenes  against  ^schines,  Bossuet 
against  Calvin — and  why  may  I  not  go  the  length 
of  saying  that  prosopopeia  is  to  be  answered  only 
by  hypotyposis,  and  metonomy  only  by  synecdoche  ? 
Or,  in  other  terms,  truth  is  not  to  be  substituted  in 

our  hearts  for  error,  but  one  belief  for  another  belief, 
245 


BRUNETliRE'S  ESSAYS 

one  sentiment  for  another,  a  stronger  wish  for  a 
gentler  wish,  a  more  persuasive  motive  of  acting  for 
a  more  careless  and  sluggish  one.  So  to  proscribe 
rhetoric  under  the  pretext  of  the  evils  which  it  has  caused 
and  the  abuse  which  may  be  made  of  its  examples  and 
lessons,  would  be,  I  think,  and  perhaps  it  is  evident, 
only  to  disarm  it  against  itself.  We  have  need  of 
it  against  itself.  Since  it  answers  to  a  necessity  of 
human  nature,  we  must  resign  ourselves  to  it :  and, 
if  I  have  clearly  explained  my  meaning,  this  necessity 
is  the  most  imperative  of  all — more  imperative  indeed 
than  the  need  of  knowledge  and  understanding — 
since  it  is  the  necessity  of  acting. 

Someone  will  tell  me,  I  know,  that  I  here  con- 
found rhetoric  with  eloquence.  I  should  like  him 
then  to  be  kind  enough  to  tell  me  what  is  the  differ- 
ence. For,  be  it  Demosthenes,  Cicero,  or  Bossuet,  I 
hardly  know  the  orator  who  has  not  been  accused  of 
declamation,  and  I  have  even  observed  that  a  differ- 
ent way  of  thinking  is  generally  sufficient  to  give 
rise  to  this  accusation.  Bossuet,  for  example,  is  a 
rhetorician  for  Voltaire  in  his  Discours  sur  rHistoire 
universelky  but  not  for  the  author  of  the  Soirees  de 
Saint-Pitersbourg ;  and  let  him  preach  his  Sermon 
sur  rUniU  de  rEglise^  and  he  becomes  a  rhetorician 
again  for  the  author  of  Le  Pape  and  UEglise  galli- 
cane.  That  is  to  say  that  the  only  difference  between 
an  orator  and  a  rhetorician  consists  in  the  soundness 

of  what   they  say  ;    and  as  this   soundness    has    not, 

246 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

and  never  can  have,  any  place  but  in  the  opinion 
of  their  audience,  the  difference  is  evidently  not  very 
great.  If,  however,  we  were  to  take  rhetoric  in  its 
narrowest  sense,  and,  by  sacrificing  substance  to  form, 
were  to  accept  the  definition  given  by  those  who  de- 
spise it  most,  there  would  be  no  lack  of  arguments, 
both  numerous  and  decisive,  for  a  reply,  and  of  these 
I  shall  select  only  one. 

Is  language  an  organism  ?  It  is  said  to  be  so,  and 
I  cannot  say,  though  I  rather  think  it  is  not ;  but 
what  it  is  assuredly,  what  it  becomes  as  soon  as  it  is 
used  for  anything  else  than  the  needs  of  daily  life,  is 
a  work  of  art.  Die  Sprache  ah  Kumt :  the  title  of 
this  book  pleases  me.  What  colours  and  lines  are 
in  the  plastic  arts,  or  sounds  also  in  music,  words  are 
in  a  language,  and,  with  stronger  reason,  the  figures, 
the  turns,  the  arrangement  of  the  parts  of  the  sen- 
tence. There  are  beautiful  words  which  sound  well 
to  the  ear,  and  there  are  disgusting  words  which 
offend  and  wound  it  and  fill  the  imagination  with 
vulgar  or  impure  ideas.  Do  I  say  words  ?  It  should 
be  syllables,  a  simple  combination  of  consonants  and 
vowels.  As  many  examples  as  can  be  wished  for 
will  be  found  in  the  slang  dictionaries.  Can  that 
art  be  possibly  considered  contemptible  or  only  in- 
different which  endeavours  to  avoid  these  encounters 
or  concourses  of  sounds,  these  words  of  the  gaol  or 
the    convict    prison,   and,    though    it    cannot    always 

entirely  avoid  them,  at  least  does  all  it  can  to  dis- 
247 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

guise  them  ?  If,  as  Pascal  says,  *'  the  mere  tone  of 
voice  changes  the  aspect  of  a  poem  or  speech,"  are 
not  accent,  turn,  and  movement  enough  to  modify 
the  meaning  of  a  sentence  ?  By  merely  changing 
the  order  of  the  v^^ords  of  a  sentence,  what  was 
obscure  becomes  clear ;  v^^hat  was  heavy,  light  and 
lively  ;  what  was  rude  and  cacophonous,  rhythmical 
and  harmonious.  And  were  not  metaphors,  long 
before  they  became  *  ornaments  of  speech,'  the  means 
and  natural  process  of  the  development  and  fructifi- 
cation, so  to  speak,  of  languages?  It  is  imagination 
which  finds  them  ;  but  if  rhetoric  is  the  art  of  using 
imagination,  of  not  confounding  an  antithesis  with 
a  similitude,  it,  above  all,  it  teaches  us  when  and 
how  imagination  is  to  be  used,  to  what  extent,  and 
for  the  expression  of  what  ideas  and  sentiments, 
who  can  fail  to  see  that,  taken  even  in  this  its 
narrowest  sense,  rhetoric  always  and  necessarily  leads 
from  the  art  of  writing  to  that  of  thinking  ? 

I  would  really  make  out  too  good  a  case  were  I 
to  care  to  show  that  it  is  also  the  art  of  composing. 
To  order  one's  thoughts,  to  regulate  their  develop- 
ment according  to  their  importance,  to  pass  from 
one  to  the  other  by  imperceptible  transitions,  to 
adjust  the  turn  of  their  movements  to  something 
less  capricious  than  our  humour — it  is  this  that  some 
very  great  writers  have  been  unable  to  do  for  want 
of   a   little    rhetoric,    a    Montesquieu,    for    example, 

and  a   Chateaubriand.     Are   they  less  great  on   that 

248 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

account,  may  be  asked.  No  :  but  I  do  not  think 
they  are  any  greater  ;  and  the  Esprit  des  Lois  and 
the  Ginie  du  Christianisme  are,  by  the  very  faults  of 
their  composition,  the  one  less  clear  and  intelligible, 
and  the  other  less  persuasive  and  conclusive.  If, 
moreover,  none  of  us  can  flatter  ourselves  on  being 
Chateaubriand  or  Montesquieu,  we  have  undoubtedly 
good  reason  to  let  their  faults  alone,  for  these  can  be 
covered  or  excused  only  by  equal  or  similar  qualities. 
In  the  meantime  w^e  run  no  risk,  if  there  is  an  art  of 
composing,  and  if  it  can  be  taught,  in  learning  it. 
And  further  let  us  note  that  this  class  of  rules  con- 
tains in  itself  the  very  means  of  dispensing  with 
them,  if  need  be.  To  know  what  must  not  be  done 
is  one  part  of  justice,  and  an  extensive  enough  part, 
since  the  codes  of  every  country  turn  on  it.  Rhetoric 
in  like  manner  teaches  us  what  must  be  neither 
written  nor  said.  But  it  teaches  us  also  what  must 
be  done  ;  and  though  it  may  not  follow  that  we  can  do 
it,  I  really  do  not  see  that  there  is  any  harm  in  trying. 
Let  us  remember,  in  short,  that  it  is  these  despised 
and  much-mocked  rhetoricians,  these  sworn  weighers 
of  words  and  syllables,  these  *  recorders '  of  usage, 
these  virtuosos  in  the  art  of  fine  speech,  these  leaders 
of  fashion,  a  Balzac,  a  Vaugelas,  the  prhieuses  even, 
La  Bruyere,  Fenelon  too,  Voltaire  above  all,  a  RoUin, 
a  Rivarol — and  how  many  others  ? — it  is  they  who 
have  made  our  French   prose  the  supple  and  pliant, 

the   keen  and   delicate,   the  wonderful   instrument  it 
249 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

is — or  was.  This  higher  rhetoric  which  is  to  be 
found,  when  sought  for,  in  the  writings  of  a  Chateau- 
briand or  a  Rousseau,  a  Bossuet  or  a  Pascal,  they 
have  set  forth  clearly  in  these  writings  and  put  within 
our  reach.  Nobody  knew  what  the  natural  style  was: 
Pascal  appeared  and  revealed  it,  and  all  its  merits  were 
recognised  immediately.  But  it  is  the  rhetoricians 
who  have  examined  wherein  this  natural  style  consists, 
and  whether  any  of  its  secrets  may  be  stolen  from  the 
author  of  the  ProvincialeSy  and  it  is  they  who  have 
pointed  out  the  methods  of  the  idiosyncrasies  of  Pascal, 
if  I  may  say  so,  and  enriched  the  language  by  them. 
If  on  the  other  hand,  in  another  writer,  the  author 
of  the  Petit  CaremCy  for  example,  there  are  too  many 
useless  ornaments,  too  great  a  desire  to  please,  too 
many  pretty  things,  and  generally  more  thought  about 
himself  than  his  subject — which  may  well  be  the  very 
definition  of  bad  rhetoric — -it  is  still  the  rhetoricians 
who  have  informed  us  against  him,  who  have  un- 
veiled his  artifice,  who  have  made  us  feel  the  abuse 
of  rhetoric  in  the  use  of  these  very  processes.  I 
cannot  believe  that  they  have  here  done  us  such  a 
bad  service ;  and  if  any  one  were  to  follow  in 
their  footsteps,  I  do  not  think  that  he  would  waste 
his  time.  . 

There  is  no  doubt  that  some  people  have  thought 
of  it,  since  we  can  no  longer  recognise,  under 
the    diversity   of    words,    the    similarity    of    things. 

Granted  that  rhetoric  is  a  legacy  of  the  past — which 
250 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

IS  sufficient  with  some  people  to  discredit  it — we  set 
no  value  on  rhetoricians,  but  quite  a  particular  one 
on  stylists.  Yet  did  Gautier  not  indulge  in  rhetoric — 
and  very  bad  rhetoric,  to  say  so  in  passing — when  he 
wrote  his  Capitaine  Fracasse  ?  Did  he  not  keep  open 
school  of  rhetoric  when  he  repeated  one  of  his 
favourite  sayings  :  "  I  am  very  strong.  I  score  five 
hundred  on  the  dynamometer,  and  /  do  not  mix 
metaphors^  The  advice  has  actually  been  followed 
so  well,  that  open  your  journals  and  you  will 
see  that  the  sole  measure  of  a  writer's  style  is 
not  the  justness  but  the  unity  of  his  metaphors.* 
A  mixed  metaphor  !  Send  the  culprit  back  to 
school !  Nobody  remembers  that  one  of  the  chief 
characteristics  of  affectation  and  preciosity  of  style 
is  precisely  this  unity  of  the  metaphors.  But 
what  really  is  the  newly  published  correspondence 
of  Flaubert  but  a  course  of  rhetoric,  in  which  I 
very  willingly  admit  there  are  some  most  excellent 
lessons  ?  Here  is  one  which  it  seems  to  me  to  the 
point  to  quote  : 

"  We  are  surprised  at  the  worthy  fellows  of  the  age 

*  TRISSOTIN. 

Pour  cette  grandeya/w  qu'a  mes  yeux  on  expose, 
Un  flat  seul  de  huit  vers  me  semble  peu  de  chose, 
Et  je  pense  qu'ici  je  ne  ferai  pas  mal, 
De  joindre  a  repigramme  ou  bien  du  madrigal. 
Le  ragout  d'un  sonnet  qui,  chez  une  princesse, 
A  passe  pour  avoir  quelque  delicatesse, 
II  est  de  sel  att'ique  assaisonne  partout, 
£t  vous  le  trouverez,  je  crois,  d'assez  bon  gout, 
251 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

of  Louis  XIV,  but  they  were  not  men  of  enormous 
genius — and  I  know  four  at  least  in  whom  we  are 
mistaken — but  what  conscientiousness  !  How  they 
force  themselves  to  find  just  expressions  for  their 
thoughts  !  What  work  !  What  consultations  with 
one  another  !  What  a  knowledge  of  Latin  !  How 
slowly  they  read  1  And  all  their  thought  is  expressed  : 
the  form  is  full,  crammed  and  stuffed  till  it  almost 
cracks."  Is  this  rhetoric  or  not  ?  I  do  not  say  it 
is  of  the  finest— there  is  hardly  a  word  less  suitable 
for  Flaubert — but  is  it  not  good,  and  almost  of  the 
best  ? 

If,  however,  these  considerations,  though  somewhat 
summary,  should  not  succeed  in  disarming  or  influ- 
encing certain  disdainful  adversaries,  others  may  be 
offered  which  are  more  utilitarian,  and  very  erudite 
at  the  same  time.  They  may  be  asked  why  the  Romans 
and  Greeks  cultivated  rhetoric  so  passionately.  I  do 
not  see  what  they  can  possibly  answer  but  that,  in 
the  republics  of  antiquity,  speech  was  a  weapon,  and 
whoever  wished  to  act  had  to  know  how  to  handle 
it  or  fence  with  it.  In  Athens  as  in  Rome,  he  who 
could  not  speak  not  only  was  unable  to  defend  him- 
self but  had  to  be  almost  invariably  in  the  clientele  or 
political  household  of  a  superior  in  eloquence.  Read 
Fenelon  on  this  point,  in  his  Letter  to  the  Academy. 
For  us  then  who  live  to-day  under  the  government 
of  speech,  of  whom   it   may   be  said    that    our   daily 

interests  are  at  the  mercy  of  an  oration,  or  the  impos- 
252 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

sibility  of  replying  to  it,  it  is  necessary  to  learn  to 
speak,  and,  like  the  Greeks  or  Romans,  we  have  more 
need  of  rhetoric  than  our  fathers  had.  We  have  need 
of  it  even  to  retort  to  or,  as  used  to  be  said,  to  take  ' 
the  edge  off  that  of  our  adversaries.  But  if  I  were  to 
insist  on  this  argument,  I  might  mix  up,  in  a  question 
so  far  entirely  literary,  certain  reasons  which  are  less 
so,  and  which  it  is  sufficient  to  have  indicated.  After 
all,  the  greatest  enemies  of  rhetoric  are  perhaps  those 
also  of  government  by  speech  :  the  liberty  they  Hke 
is  dumb,  and  the  right  they  vindicate  so  energetically 
for  others  is  that  of  being  silent. 

There  is  another  reason  which  seems  to  me  still 
stronger,  and  with  it  I  shall  end.  Rhetoric  has  now 
for  a  few  years  been  deleted  from  our  programme  of 
secondary  education,  to  be  replaced  by  the  vague 
'notions  on  literary  history,'  and,  if  I  may  once  dare 
to  take  the  liberty  of  speaking  for  myself,  it  is  not 
I  who  would  complain  that  something  was  being 
done  for  literary  history.  It  is  well  to  know  on 
leaving  school  that  the  elder  Corneille,  for  example, 
did  not  mean  to  flatter  Louis  XIV  in  his  Cinna^ 
under  the  name  of  Augustus.  This  was  not  known 
till  quite  recently.  Rhetoric  is  one  good  thing,  and 
chronology  is  another,  and,  may  I  say  so,  is  one 
of  my  passions.  But  since  there  is  now  much  talk 
of  the  establishment  of  a  school  of  French  Classics, 
it  does  not  seem  useless  to  express  the  wish  that 
rhetoric  will  there  retake  its   natural  place ;  and  it 


BRUNETIERE'S  ESSAYS 

may  be  as  well  for  me  to  give  the  principal  reason. 
It  is  that  our  classical  literature — and  not  merely  its 
prose,  but  also  its  poetry — is  essentially  oratorical. 
"The  spoken  word,"  said  Vaugelas  in  the  Prefece 
to  his  Remarques  sur  la  langue  fran^a'tse^  "  is  the  first 
in  order  and  digpity,  since  the  written  word  is  only 
its  image,  as  it  itself  is  the  image  of  the  thought ; " 
and  from  Malherbe  to  BufFon  at  least,  to  Chateau- 
briand and  even  to  Guizot,  I  can  think  only  of  a  few 
story  writers  whose  style  of  writing  does  not  verify 
this  principle.  And  we  know,  too,  the  attention  the 
author  of  Madame  Bovary  paid  to  the  harmony  of  the 
sentence.  What  does  this  mean  but  that  for  two  or 
three  hundred  years  our  greatest  writers  have  not  seen 
but  heard  themselves  write.  To  dispel  much  of  the 
cavilling  at  the  style  of  Moliere,  we  have  only  not  to 
be  content  with  running  over  his  plays  with  our  eyes, 
but  to  go  and  see  them  played  or  to  read  them 
aloud.  Now,  without  a  little  rhetoric,  how  can 
we  interpret  such  a  literature  ?  Would  we  not  lose 
half  of  the  profit  to  be  drawn  from  it  ?  We  would 
only  be  forgetting,  as  it  were,  to  light  our  lantern. 
Try  to  explain  Racine's  Andromaque  or  Britannicus 
without  insisting  on  that  irony  which  is  one  of  his 
favourite  means  of  shading  his  thought,  and  of  which 
he  apparently  meant  to  exhaust  every  turn  !  Or  try 
to  show  the  unique  characteristic  of  the  Sermons  of 
Bossuet  without  pointing  out  their  superiority  to  those 

of  Bourdaloue,  and  be  successful  without  the  help  of 
254 


IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

rhetoric  !  We  may  be  assured  that  without  rhetoric 
the  school  of  French  Classics  will  at  once  degenerate 
into  a  school  of  facts,  and  this  is  certainly  not  what 
is  wanted — or  at  least  promised.  This  reason  alone 
would  have  been  sufficient  to  lead  me  to  undertake 
the  defence  of  this  despised  creature.  I  hope,  how- 
ever, that  the  reader  will  approve  of  the  other  reasons, 
and  that,  on  joining  all  together,  he  will  be  willing  to 
agree  with  us  that  there  are  decidedly  some  of  the 
dead  that  must  be  brought  to  life  again. 


THE    END 


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